Motherboard vs. CPU failure - how do you determine?

[stech1]

This question concerns hardware problems that have been narrowed down to what appear to be motherboard failures.
Without having a known good CPU on hand to swap out and test, what is the best way (if any) to determine whether the motherboard has failed, or that the CPU itself has failed?
Thank you for your time.

 

[cdogg]

If in fact one of the components (CPU or motherboard) is damaged beyond working capacity, you're not going to know which one unless you can swap in a good replacement for one of them. Both are required to work in order to perform any diagnostic.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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[paparazi]

I would be interested to know how you came to this conclusion, what things have you tried etc.
What is the full specification of your machine.
How and when exactly did the fault occur.
Was it random or did it faulter after you carried out some work or software upgrade, a full run down of events would be helpful.
Martin

We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[edfair]

And then there is always the possibility that whatever is wrong will damage the replacement part.
There are some few things you could look at. Address and data lines with a logic probe would be transitioning if the CPU was clocking. You couldn't tell if it was right but you would know that the clock circuits were probably working.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[LawnBoy]

In my experience, if you haven't overheated or static-shocked the processor it's probably OK.