Is my CPU dieing ?

[dholdi]

Firstly, a little background.
Around 9 months ago I decided to upgrade to the following :-

Intel Core i9-13900K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail

Order Intel Core i9-13900K (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

Order Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-60800C36 7600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G7600HC36DDC01)

Order TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-60800C36 7600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G7600HC36DDC01) now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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Following the build I had issues with games crashing, BF2042 wouldnt play unless I slowed down the CPU, Forza H5 and Wolfenstein TNC would crash randomly.
Memtest revealed multiple errors so I spoke to OCCS and they recommended that the ram was too fast for the board and on their advice I downgraded to :-

TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01)

Order TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01) now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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I also later in the year changed the motherboard to this one I picked up from the MM :-

Asus ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WIFI II (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

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And added an extra:-

TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01)

Order TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C30 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FF3D532G6000HC30DC01) now online and benefit from fast delivery.

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Due to a busy summer I didnt do much more gaming but when I did it seemed to be stable.
I recently started playing Sniper Elite 5 quite often and after a couple of months that also started to crash quite regularly.
I also noticed that other programs I use started behaving differently ( CCTV for eg would hang and not display camera feeds without restarting ) and I would get the occasional BSOD.
So I thought right, time for a fresh windows install and thats when I suspected something was really amiss.
It took 4-5 attempts before windows would install, with numerous BSOD during the process.
Some of the BSOD were that quick I didnt get chance to write them down but ones I did were Memory Management, System Services Exception, Page Fault in Non Paged Area.
Now I've managed to get windows to install it runs terribly, drivers wont install and just hang or BSOD, programs that do install hang or BSOD.
When the PC goes to sleep it wont wake up without rebooting.
So after a little research I have run the following tests :-

Memcheck86 - Took 15 hours and returned almost 4000 errors.
OCCT - CPU test for 1 Hour and returned 120,000 errors across most cores ( couldnt check which as it crashed on completion )
LinpackExtreme - fails in under a minute.

What I have noticed whilst running these tests is that the CPU immediately goes to 100degC as soon as the test starts, it doesnt gradually build up, but is there within a couple of seconds.
Other hardware is a Dark Rock Pro 4 cooler, Superflower 1000W PSU and a Gigabyte 3080TI.
So apologies for the long post but I knew you would want to know most of this before commenting.
Is there anything else I need to be checking or should I just be contacting OC ?

Thanks in advance

 

[dholdi]

Firstly, thanks to you all who've taken the time to respond, its much appreciated.
To address a couple of the queries that have been made :-
The initial 7600 ram kit when running under XMP, Memtest gave multiple errors but with XMP disabled gave 0 errors.
I changed to the Asus MB purely because I've always used them in the past, but was unable to justify the cost until one came up on the MM, not because I suspected issues were with the Gigabyte MB.
I dont think airflow is an issue as I have 3 extract and 2 supply fans and system / gpu temps seem to be normal.
Following the suggestions made after my initial post I have tried the following :-
Removed the later set of RAM and turned off XMP, Memtest has returned 0 errors.
I've then reinstalled Windows, which seemed to install fine, updated everything drivers wise which also went fine and played SE5 for 2 hours without a single crash.
I'm going to re enable XMP and run the test again overnight.
I'm then going to try the later set of RAM again with and without XMP enabled.
I do feel that having experienced the same issues with 3 different sets of RAM that I'm not convinced the RAM is the issue, however the article Tetras has posted would suggest that the CPU isnt capable of running any of the RAM I have tried under XMP and therefore a CPU RMA would be declined because of this.
If this is the case then I'm disappointed OCCS would suggest this RAM although I also blame myself for not researching this enough prior.
Hopefully I will get a chance to update tomorrow, but I'm off to Lanzarote Wed morning so might not have time because of packing cases etc.
If not, I will update when I get back and once again thanks to you all.

 

[dholdi]

RAM overclocking is considered overclocking as it puts an abnormal (ie not normal) stress on the IMC, so intel will decline the RMA.
the IMC is rated to run at 5600, so anything faster is literally a lottery, which in your unfortunate case, you have drawn a lemon.

Hopefully not as the further tests refered to above with XMP enabled on 2 sticks resuled in a pass.

 

[dholdi]

Just to be clear about what I said: I was referring to 4 sticks of 6000 CL30 (with Intel's official rating of just 4400).

2 sticks is still beyond the stock rating for 2 sticks (as tamzzy said, that's 5600), but realistically, I'd expect most K CPUs are able to handle 2 single rank sticks of 6000 CL30.

If they can't do it, I'd have thought some minor adjustments (e.g. looser timings) would solve the problem.

From what I've seen with 4 sticks, everyone has problems and needs to do some tweaking, but what 4 single rank sticks typically achieve with your CPU, I don't know.


It isn't a 100% rule, but I would normally expect faulty RAM to produce errors even at stock, with XMP disabled. When you run @ 7600 or with 4 sticks of DDR5, it makes it hard to troubleshoot where the problem lies, because they're both likely to be troublesome.

If you find that you can enable XMP with 2 sticks of 6000 CL30 and run games stably and get no errors with memtest, I think your IMC is just..., well, average.

With 4 sticks, I'd suggest only trying something like 5200 and see if you can go up from there.

The 2 sticks on XMP have been running fine since yesterday, I know thats not a long test period but an overnight memtest passed and a couple of hourss of gaming didnt produce any errors..

 

[dholdi]

Just to clarify, when you're running XMP off, are you still setting the RAM manually to 7600 or leaving everything auto? What's the actual memory speed?

The 7600 ram was returned a year ago, the tests I have been running are with the ram at stock settings or with XMP enabled so 4800 or 6000.

 

[dholdi]

Once again, thanks to you all for your input it is very much appreciated.
I'm pretty happy that all seems fine with 2 sticks and XMP enabled @6000.
When I get back from a bit of rays I will try the newer sticks to see if they give the same results and report back.
Take care

 

[dholdi]

Apologies, I should have reported back earlier than this but life got in the way.
I tried the other set of ram and there were no issues with that either.
However, things did get worse, random crashes when both gaming and just browsing, all sorts of errors in event log.
So I decided to reinstall windows from scratch and log everything as I went.
I experienced muliple crashes during the windows installation.
After it finally managed to complete there were further crashes / errors when downloading / installing programs.
Just as an example, I downloaded chrome browser and it refused to install, downloaded again, refused again, downloaded again, refused again.
All 3 downloads were the same size, after a number of attempts it decided to install from the first dl.
This happened with a number of different programs.
The random crashing and programs shutting down continued.
To try and cut an already long story short I contacted overclockers customer services.
I explained all of the above and the history already outlined in this thread and after a couple of questions answered I received an RMA.
I sent the CPU back on a Monday afternoon and received a replacement on Wednesday afternoon.
All seems well with this one so I guess the answer to the thread title was yes.
Also, thanks to OC's for excellent after sales support much appreciated.