# BSOD, is it CPU, RAM, or motherboard?



## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

Hi, so my rig after a few years seems to have run into a major problem. I'll apologize in advance for the amount of backstory, and make a TLDR at the bottom. 

Four days ago, after restarting, my computer would BSOD or kernel panic immediately when starting. I say kernel panic because I run Snow Leopard on one of my hard drives, I have never had any issues with it.

Both BSOD and Kernel Panic would point at the same things, so I knew it shouldn't be software/driver related. Two separate installs of different OS's both saying there's a problem... I ran memtest86 and it turns out one of my 2gb sticks was definitely bad, so I pulled it. 

I installed a clean Windows 7 x64 to do further testing. It boots, but would still BSOD, with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or memory_corruption etc. I can post these if needed. 

I found out that when I reset my CMOS to try and fix it, I didn't set my voltages correctly afterwards, so I bumped my RAM up to 2 volts as it's specified for 2-2.1, and bumped my vcore of my CPU down from 1.3 to 1.2750 (this is what I used to run stable on)

Now, it seems like my computer is running fine, no more BSOD, but still crashing. I played osu! for a while and it ran fine, then I played Starcraft 2 and just the game actually crashed, citing something about memory. I tried playing another game, this time it froze and hung indefnitely. 

So now I have restarted it from there, and taken out the 2gb stick that would have been paired with the one I pulled earlier, giving me 4gb total now.

TLDR: 

Aside from running memtest86+ *overnight*, what should I be doing to diagnose my problem? I still don't know if its my RAM, CPU, or Motherboard. I'm running Prime95 right now to try and get it to crash and give me some useful information.

Also perhaps unrelated?, but these issues did start happening right after I got a Razer Deathadder Black/3500 edition. How would I test whether or not this is causing my issues?

Specs:
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 Yorkfield, 8gb mushkin ddr2-1066, Geforce 9800GT 512mb, five SATA drives in AHCI


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## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

Just ran the driver verifier on everything non-microsoft and rebooted. All good.

Attaching my performance monitor report as well.


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Can you please provide us the JCGriff Report? Thanks.

Note that the user application crashing as opposed to the BSODs can still mean memory corruption, but it's residing in the lower portion of memory (as in the memory fitted in the first slots). The Windows kernel along with drivers always resides on the very top of your memory, in the highest region. Any memory corruption that occurs there will crash the system, and any memory corruption that occurs outside of it will most likely just crash any application that happens to reside there.


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## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

Yes, of course. 

I was just replying about how that makes sense for the RAM, as I am able to boot after removing sticks 3 and 4. But, as I was typing in this box, I BSOD'd again, with something new : DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. 

This has something to do with power I think, which goes back to me thinking power was the issue in the first place... I don't know if my voltages were even set correctly when I ran memtest, maybe my RAM isn't even bad? It also may just be a bad driver that is unrelated, as it was in "sleep" and crashed shortly after waking.. still very confused here! :3-sick1:


Either way, there may not be a crashdump for this one... it would not dump the memory, it just sat at "Initializing hard drive for crashdump"/etc. for a very long time.

But here is the JCGriff report, run again after the newest BSOD.

By the way, my power supply is a 420w Silencer with 30A on the +12v rail.


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

I don't see the DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD in the JCGriff Report. Can you confirm that you have it? It's a possibility it may be a completely separate incident to what you're experiencing here.

Just to confirm, is your memory compatible with your motherboard? That may be the case with what you're dealing with.

If you wanna check voltages, use HWInfo with the option _Sensors only_. Log two scenarios: one during idle, and one during high load. Send them to us also for us to gander at.


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## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

Like I said, it wouldn't dump the memory of that BSOD 

I am extremely sure that the memory is compatible with my motherboard, as I've been running stable for almost two years and often do RAM and load-intensive tasks.

I'll come back and post when I've got the HWInfo logs.


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## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

Here's the HWiNFO logs. Is there anything I should do to test if my PSU, Motherboard, or CPU are faulting?


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Oops, sorry, in my haste I overlooked you stating it may not have produced the crashdump. 

The voltages don't look too bad. A wee bit skewed on all of them but not beyond obviously poor ranges. I did notice your GPU hits 100+ C temperatures during high load. While a GPU is able to withstand higher temps than a CPU, 100C is still pretty hot, so you should look at what you should do to remedy that. The CPU temps are rock solid and very stable and cool.

However, despite the potential GPU problem, I don't think a overheating GPU is the case here. When a crashdump fails to produce because of a hang while it's trying to initialize the drive, it usually means there's an issue with drivers that are related to the drive controller (that are involved in disk I/O). I'm not sure if an antivirus filter driver is getting in the way, or the actual drive controller/RAID drivers themselves are. Or the drive itself is even having problems.

If you want, you can do some hard drive tests. Run all the tests on Seatools besides the Advanced ones. Confirm that everything is ok on all of them.

As for the memory, you should confirm that we're dealing with either bad memory or a motherboard with bad memory slots. Try swapping the supposedly bad memory sticks into slots 1 & 2 and see if things run as ok as they were with the original sticks in slots 1 & 2. If not, you can consider we're dealing with bad RAM. Also, you aren't mixing around memory brands are you? Have you also checked to confirm that your motherboard supports the brand of memory you're using? Lastly, go ahead and start doing those memory tests as well.


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## luckycloud (Dec 13, 2011)

I ran hard drive tests in a boot cd, and everything checked out OK. No AV on this clean install yet. I installed the SATA drivers from the manufacturer website on first boot after OS install.

Uh oh, though. I'm currently running with the two sticks that I thought were "bad" in slots 1 and 2, booted fine, running Prime95 and typing this. Maybe slots 3 and 4 just died on my motherboard? Does this happen?

I'm going to be running some more things to test it, but as far as my GPU heat issue goes, what solutions do I have?


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## VirGnarus (Jun 28, 2010)

Yes, there are times when a bad motherboard shows signs of malfunctioning by causing problems with certain memory slots. Keep testing those memory slots by swapping. If indeed you find those slots are bad, you should consider your motherboard as defective and will need to be replaced. Also, if I recall correctly, there _must_ be a stick in the first slot at all times, regardless of where the rest of the RAM is, otherwise bootup problems would arise. Just be aware of that.

For the GPU, you can clean out your GPU fan and heatsink, though you may need to replace the stock cooler with something else if it turning to be insufficient.


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