Bad CPU? Three motherboards, three sets of RAM, problems still

Axman

VP of Extreme Liberty
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I bought an MSI FM2-A75IA-E53 for an HTCP/file server earlier this year and it wouldn't boot, POST, or beep. I sent it back to Newegg, and the replacement mobo was the same.

I got frustrated, thinking that somehow it was not compatible with the AMD A6-5400K APU, so I went out and bought an ASRock FM2175M-ITX to see how that worked.

It powered up and installed Windows, although it wouldn't detect the SSD, which also had problems with two other computers. I think it just doesn't work, but I mention it because it shows up in the other computer's BIOS/UEFI, but it does not with my current ASRock FM2175M-ITX.

It ran, but suspend didn't work and it would occasionally crash so hard that it didn't have time to blue screen.

I ran MEMTEST on it and it was a wall of red. So I took it back to the Microcenter and asked if I could not just exchange the RAM (Crucial Ballistics), but test it in their service center first. The first pair of RAM I tested sprouted failures right away, so I tried a third set of RAM. It was late, so I was pushing closing time, and went home before the test completed. Still, it was somewhat promising as it didn't fail in the five minutes or so I had to test it.

But today I ran it again after discovering that the USB 3 plugs weren't working; I thought maybe the original bad memory build was corrupt. Being a fresh install, I just grabbed my media and began to reinstall Windows (7 Premium x64). I get to the copying files portion and it BSODs:

STOP: 0x00000050
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

This is a bad RAM code. I ran MEMTEST and it came up all failing again, no surprises. After that, I tried again, and got some other driver-related BSODs.

Three motherboards, three pairs of RAM, flaky SSD: While it's clearly throwing memory faults, I can't help but think the problem may be the APU.

This would be the first ever CPU I've had that sorta-worked. I've never seen one do anything other than run or not run. But it's common to all the hardware configs. Anyone else ever get a processor that's shitty but OK enough to boot (and sometimes install and run an OS)?

What would you do in my situation?
 
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What PSU do you have?
Did you try a different PSU?
 
I tried it with the PSU included with the Antec ISK 310-150 case as well as a new Antec VP450 that's on my workbench. Both are new and appear functional. I'll give it a try with another PSU, though, I didn't test all three motherboards with the VP450, just the first two. I have others to test with, too.
 
Ok, report back with your PSU results.

With that said, there is a chance that the CPU itself is defective but that is rather rare.
 
No change with alternate PSUs. I have the Amazon prime and sixty bucks. I'm going to test my faulty CPU theory tomorrow.
 
Update+solved.

It was a bad APU. New one works great, undervolts well, and with CF support and an entry-level GPU games pretty damn well, too.

There you have it. You can have a broken processor that still boots, even sometimes runs software.

I am having some issues getting sleep to work right. It powers back on immediately after going to sleep. I suspect it's a settings issue more than anything else.
 
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