Core2duo q6600 dead?

I have a 10 year old rig rockin a Q6600 that has been acting strange lately. Everything seems to slow down drastically to a point where it’s nearly unusable. mobo, PSU, GPU are the same from day 1. I replaced HDD with SSD and put x2 2GB RAM sticks instead of x2 1GB sticks. I’ve even tried putting my old GTX 960 in it to see if GPU was the issue. the symptoms remain the same. After running intel cpu diagnostic tool, I’ve discovered that the test fails inconsistently. Sometimes only floating point fails, or brand string, or nearly half on the list, etc.
Is it safe to assume that the cpu is on the verge of death? Or would there be a way to revive it? Unfortunately I don’t have any other compatible hardware to swap for testing other than the original RAM sticks.
Thanks. :smile:

Is it running stock? or is it overclocked? have you fiddled with voltages?
Also what Mobo are you running? 'cos some of them weren’t great for power delivery
((yeah it’s not just modern mobo’s that have VRM cooling issues) the harder it was pushed the more likely it is to degrade over time) so it could be the motherboard.
Have you tried undervolting it and/or underclocking it?
Thermal paste goes off, have you reseated the the CPU cooler, how hot is it getting?
While it has 4Gb of ram, what OS are you running? and what are you doing when it slows down?

mobo is ASUS P5QPL-AM.
I am running it at stock. (I don’t think this mobo is overclocking capable when I checked the BIOS.
Running wandows 10 pro 64bit (used to run XP, then I installed wandows 7 in 2014, then got the free upgrade to 10)
I have reapplied thermal paste. Temps seem good. (36-38 Idle & 45-55 during twitch stream at 1080p 60fps)
It slows down so much after about 10-15 minutes of twitch/youtube/netflix streaming. graphics get all choppy and UI reacts slower than a console. I have clean installed OS multiple times to make sure it wasn’t some weird virus or something. I’ve tried edge, firefox, chrome as well.
I have not yet tried undervolting. I will give that a shot. Many it got so old it no longer knows how to regulate the voltage. I did notice when I took the mobo out of the antec sonata III case, the PCB was slightly warped from the stock cooler. (I guess some boards warp after 10 years?) but the board stays flat when it’s all screwed into the case obviously.
Do you think it’s worth it to look for a cheap LGA 775 mobo on ebay? :smile:

Open CPUZ and see if the clock speed is going down also how much RAM is being used?

You could toss that corer2 duo out the door and put in a xeon 4 core 4 thread in that… I did in my evga 780 sli ftw mobo… got 4.0 out of 4 cores…

seems like clock speed is at around 2.2ghz most of the time. also says 1.3GB ram is being used when nothing is open. 2.6GB when chrome is open

not a bad idea but I was hoping if I can get it stable and usable as it is since this isn’t my main rig or anything and I thought it would be baller to have a dedicated streaming PC :smile:

Oh yup… Chrome is eating most of your RAM. But the latest meltdown patches have been slowing down older processors and been causing BSODs.

Also, a Q6600 is a Core 2 Quad, not a Core 2 Duo. It’s when Intel experimented with having something like Threadripper with 2 Core 2 Duo dies on the same chip.

oh yeah… it started to slow down around the time the meltdown news got out… but could it slow down a computer THIS much? I just want it to run video streams… :expressionless:

Initial patches locked up people’s machines. And your CPU is super old with no PCID.

:sob:

Just go back to an earlier version before the Meltdown update and see if that’s what caused it. But it most likely is. I remember reading that LGA 775 performance will be hit pretty hard after the update.

That used to be a beastly CPU though. One of my all time favorites.

My parents still run my old Q6700. If their mobo ever dies, I’ll give them Haswell with a i5-4690k. But, the mobo has a Enzotech copper Northbridge heatsink I installed, cause the northbridge is usually the first to die, and it hasn’t died yet.

I’m now very weary of patching their system. My Dad needs a Chinese spyware ridden neoIMAGING software cause that’s the only photo editor he knows how to use. He gave up learning Photoshop cause it wasn’t “fine tuned” for Chinese use. He has to stick on Windows for this specific reason.

ugh… looks like i’ll try a couple more things and if nothing fixes, giveaway?

haha sounds like my dad :joy:

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just build a ryzen 3 build. the q6600 is just way too old.

https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm

Could run this and try turning off the fix if its installed.

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I searched for that on google images.
Oh my… The UI… :grimacing:

It’s literally the only thing my Dad is comfortable with and will not move off of Windows because of it. The Mac port is literally Mac malware, so I can’t get him that. And it’s spyware ridden as it is.

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reminds me of when my dad asked why he no longer sees “fun ads” after installing ublock origin for chrome. :joy:

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