One of my systems has an MSI P35 Neo2 motherboard with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Quad processor, and all the usual other bits and pieces. It had been running 24/7 processing BOINC jobs, with a very mild overclock, around 2.6GHz, but with a very serious, big Zalman heatsink, since the Core 2 came out, about 2006/7.
Earlier this year, it started having trouble, it would crash once a week or so. The interval between crashes shortened, to daily. Now, at stock speed, it will not run for an hour with four BOINC jobs going.
It would seem to be dying. I seek opinions now on whether to replace the processor, or rebuild the machine with an i7. Obviously, the chip replacement is considerably cheaper than the requisite motherboard, processor and memory of the upgrade, but the performance upgrade is not huge, so perhaps the processor chip will suffice.
Opinions.