Computer freezing lately

[kahlil88]

Is it possible my CPU has gone bad? One of the "legs" that holds the heatsink on the board was broken in the process of transplanting it onto the new motherboard, which is why it wasn't very secure before. I noticed today that the thermal paste on the CPU and heatsink was very hard and crusty, which I've heard can create heating problems. The computer is also in a much warmer environment than when it was working. It was in a sun porch that was absolutely frigid at night (the only time I used it). The problem started when I moved it to a loft that is usually sweltering. I ran memtest86+ on it once, but didn't monitor it. Eventually, it froze (as usual) and there were errors...but could the errors have been caused by the CPU failing in the middle of the test?

 

[kahlil88]

UPDATE: I bought an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 CPU (with new heatsink), and for awhile my computer seemed to work fine, but kept freezing a bunch today. I decided to run Memtest86+ thinking it might be a RAM issue. A couple minutes into the test, it started giving errors then rebooted. I decided to swap out some RAM from my friend's computer and successfully ran Memtest all the way through. I've been using it for the past few hours problem-free!