Constant instability and crashes to desktop

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I originally posted in the overclocking and cooling section for this which in hindsight may have been the wrong choice.

Hi all

I've run into some issues with my rather old gaming rig.
In the last week or so it has started becoming extremely unstable with temperatures that previously peaked at 45-50 degrees now hitting 70-80.

I have the following parts:
I7 3770K was running a corsair H100 now has an Asetek 240mm extreme
Asus Z77 Deluxe-V
4x4Gb corsair XMS3 pc16000C9
Corsair AX1050 PSU
EVGA GTX 980 ACX 2.0 FTW

While gaming one night it started crashing repeatedly so I dropped my overclock from it's usual 4.6 (it's been there for years with no issue) down to 4.4 then 4.2 and finally to stock and still it was running extremely hot with no additional voltage. It still crashed repeatedly with games either dropping right back to desktop or the rest state warning and reboot.

Assuming this meant my H100 was either running dry or plugged/failed I bought an Asetek 240mm extreme and fitted this along with some fresh thermal grizzly Kryonaut compound.
Sadly this only netted me a couple of degrees improvement. I think possibly due to the fresh thermal compound more than anything. I've checked and re-flashed the BIOS and dropped it back to the fail safe defaults and I still get crashes every half hour or so with nothing obvious to figure out what is causing it. Though the cpu temp remains very high.

I did spot something that I think could be an issue while running HWmonitor as I was stresstesting with prime95. Voltage is currently set to manufacturer default within the BIOS, but it is reporting Vcore @ 1.360V when at full load. it's been years since I applied the overclock so I'm unsure but this seems higher than stock voltage should be?

The last error statement that showed during a blue screen was critical_structure_corruption
I tried giving the board a look over with a thermal imaging camera to see if it's potentially a VRM failure but theres nothing obvious to me?
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I forgot to change the scale across to Celsius before saving but hopefully you get the idea.

Another error I kept getting was windows would randomly block a running game from accessing my graphics hardware. This would happen about twice a day.

As was suggested I've run every single combination of individual ramm stick through each socket on the motherboard and found no solution so far.

I have however started to get an enormous number of entries within event viewer that unfortunately mean nothing to me and some that are likely unrelated I find quite worrying.

Any suggestions/ help would be greatly appreciated!
 
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Voltage is currently set to manufacturer default within the BIOS, but it is reporting Vcore @ 1.360V when at full load. it's been years since I applied the overclock so I'm unsure but this seems higher than stock voltage should be?
Looks like motherboard is heavily overvolting.

4.4GHz represents the highest speed we achieved at the default voltage, which CPU-Z reported as 1.128V.
https://techreport.com/review/22833...ore-i7-3770k-overclocked-on-four-motherboards
Even if Intel had sent them cherry picked CPU voltage difference is heavy.

Anyway crashing to desktop from game kinda hints there's problem in graphics card.
If it was CPU crashing then symptoms should be lot more severe.
 
Hi Todd, both the H100 and the brand new asetek are within 3 degrees of each other. i'd have been surprised if both were faulty. but I guess it's not outside the realms of possibility. I'll swap my other halfs Coolermaster seidon over and see if it's at least close to the mark.
 
  • Failed with 0x490 modifying AppModel Runtime status for package Microsoft.SeaofThieves_2.77.3713.2_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe for user STUDYGAMER\gorba (current status = 0x0, desired status = 0x20).
  • Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
  • Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
  • Faulting application name: SoTGame.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5b633a34
    Faulting module name: SoTGame.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5b633a34
    Exception code: 0xc0000005
    Fault offset: 0x0000000001785f45
    Faulting process ID: 0x9dc
    Faulting application start time: 0x01d431c95d2f5e28
    Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.SeaofThieves_2.77.3713.2_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Athena\Binaries\UWP64\SoTGame.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.SeaofThieves_2.77.3713.2_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\Athena\Binaries\UWP64\SoTGame.exe
    Report ID: 7e36d05d-24db-4f57-be94-41c2424fe9ce
    Faulting package full name: Microsoft.SeaofThieves_2.77.3713.2_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
    Faulting package-relative application ID: AthenaClientShipping

This is after a complete re-format to try and rule out any software issues.

along with some other ones

  • Windows Hello for Business provisioning will not be launched.
    Device is AAD joined ( AADJ or DJ++ ): Not Tested
    User has logged on with AAD credentials: No
    Windows Hello for Business policy is enabled: Not Tested
    Local computer meets Windows hello for business hardware requirements: Not Tested
    User is not connected to the machine via Remote Desktop: Yes
    User certificate for on premise auth policy is enabled: Not Tested
    Machine is governed by none policy.
    See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=832647 for more details.
  • The driver \Driver\WudfRd failed to load for the device SWD\WPDBUSENUM\{79074d23-9dac-11e8-8e88-806e6f6e6963}#0000000000100000.
  • The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000003b (0x00000000c0000005, 0xfffff80b4e3597ac, 0xffff84010117b910, 0x0000000000000000). A dump was saved in: C:\Windows\MEMORY.DMP. Report Id: 891a23db-12cd-4b44-88ef-f49db04cb056.

Sorry for the daft question but what can I use in Windows 10 to read this dump file? It's the first time it's actually made one.
 
Have you tried doing a BIOS rollback, or just trying a single DRAM module? If the BIOS is corrupted then perhaps it’s sending the wrong voltages, or they are reading incorrectly.
 
I've not done a rollback but I flashed it today for the latest version, which didn't seem to make any difference. I've done onr ram stick in each slot in every conceivable combination and no change. I will see if I can borrow my other halfs ram and see if it makes a difference.
 
I swapped the ram over with some corsair dominator sticks from the other halfs computer. Hey presto no crashes even with an overnight stint of prime95 blend. It does still mean I've got the cpu temps to deal with and go through the memory dumps in case theres something I've missed (Thanks EsaT)
I think I'll do another fresh install of windows to make sure the ram hasn't effected the install (it crashed twice in a row during the install before it finally made it through)

Didn't the corsair XMS3 stuff come with a lifetime warranty?

On another note WTF happened to the price of DDR3?? No decent sets in stock and people asking £270+ for a 4x8Gb matched set. :(

I've ordered a de-lid tool and some more Kryonaut so hopefully that will address the high temps on the cpu
 
After a bit of checking I found the vcore auto voltage values were significantly higher than was needed. I'm not sure if this is normal? I reflashed the BIOS again to make sure that wasn't an issue but under full load I was getting upwards of 1.45 volts.

I've since knocked it back down to 1.200 with a pretty soft overclock of 4.2Ghz and it's nice and stable with temps after the de-lid now hovering around the 50-55 degrees mark.

New G-skill sniper 2133 cl10 4x8Gb set has been put in (at an eye-watering price) and it's now running completely stable.

Thanks for the help guys!
 
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