OcUK System 'dead' - advice or return needed?

[Starwolf]

I purchased an OcUK Gaming Radiance Dawn system in April 2023, and it has been as reliable as one can expect of a Windows system - until recently.

I mostly use the system for AI Art with some light gaming. The AI Art makes heavy use of the GPU, and the UI runs in a web browser (I have used MS Edge for this, as I found it more reliable than Google Chrome) under Python, and Python started to crash regularly (hourly) with Event ID 1000, and sometimes I would see an error 0xC0000005 in the logs too. There would also be the occasional BSOD, and event logs would have the less than useful reason of BUGCHECK (sorry, I don't recall the IDs).

I would also get Event ID 1000 fails running games under Renpy.

Running DISM and SFC to check system integrity never revealed an issue.
Yesterday the problems became really bad, with even MS Edge failing with Event ID 1000 / Error 0xC0000005 continually. Having had enough of the issues, I decided to wipe the system drive and re-install Windows 11, so I downloaded the media creation tool to make a bootable USB stick with the OS on it, but when I ran the utility it would quit after a few minutes, and the Event log showed it failing with Error 0xC0000005.

I therefore used a different computer to create the USB stick.

1. The next step was to configure the machine to boot from USB in the bios and restart.
2. Windows installer ran from the USB stick and I told it to format the system disk and install the os
3. The 'Installing Windows' dialog appeared, and it copied Windows files (to the system disk)
4. It started the second step - Getting files ready for installation - but after a few percent failed with an Unexpected Error - unbelievably it proudly declared Error code: 0xC0000005

I have tried this a number of times and along the way created and used a different USB stick, but the error always happens during step 2, but not always at the same point - it is usually between 1% and 10% of the way through the step.

I am now at a loss as to how to proceed, and suspect I may have a hardware issue (the changing fail point during 'identical' install attempts suggested this). My initial thought was maybe the NVME storage or controller had issues, but I have seen threads listing similar symptoms on Reddit where the underlying cause turned out to be a bad CPU.

It is quite a high-end build, so I do not have any components that I can swap-in to do hardware checks.

Can OcUK suggest what I should try next, or is this a case of needing a return so that OcUK can check it out?

Thanks.

 

[Starwolf]

OcUK CS link is here - https://help.overclockers.co.uk/hc/en-gb - best to start a ticket with them and then will assist.

That page looked to me like it dealt with pre-sales stuff, but on further reading I think I found how to send a query like mine.

Thanks!

 

[Starwolf]

I have raised a ticket with OcUK and have an acknowledgement email...

 

[Starwolf]

I raised a ticket for the fault last Friday, so that's 4 days ago, including 2 full business days - the acknowledgement email said that OcUK try to look at tickets within 36 hours, but we are clearly beyond that now.
I will phone them in the morning, but does anybody happen to know what the current lead-times are for a response?

 

[Starwolf]

The last time I raised a webnote it took 4 business days to get a reply. I guess they are being snowed under. You could give them a call in the morning and they should deal with the RMA there and then.

Oh dear - that is not exactly the best of service. I will give them a call tomorrow, as I hope they will agree that it is a hardware issue, requiring an RMA, so we can use the long response time to send the machine to them, rather than it just sit here doing nothing.

Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[Starwolf]

Sounds to me like a memory or an SSD/IO error that is happening, generally i have found that issues with errors/blue screens during an installation that isnt very intensive use of the CPU is down to faulty memory or on as a long shot the SSD has problems with reading/writing data.

If you have access to another computer and a USB key, first thing i would do is create a bootable USB of memtest86 free (available here https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm) and boot from that and let it run through and see if there is any memory errors.

Sounds reasonable, so I made a bootable USB and ran through the test as suggested. After a couple of hours (the machine has 32GB) the test completed successfully with no errors, so I think that eliminates a memory issue.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Starwolf]

Does sound more like a failing drive tbh or could be something as simple as a failing Sata cable if its a SSD.

The Primary (OS) drive is a 1TB NVMe, but I also have a second drive (a 2TB NVMe) installed as a data drive.

I therefore tried installing an OS to the second NVMe, and it failed at a similar point, again with the 0xC0000005 error. In addition, I received the same error code while it was loading the installer from the USB stick (ie. before I had told it where to perform the installation), so I think that effectively excludes the drives as cause.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Starwolf]

I've had HDD's going dodgy in the past. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Changing the Sata cable fixed it straight away. Maybe try that. I know you're using SSD but still.

In my case, I have 2 NVMe drives, and the OS will not install to either, so I guess that the equivalent of a bad SATA cable would need to be an issue on the motherboard.

I suspect that the problem getting much worse in the same week that the story of sudden issues with Raptor Lake CPUs broke almost seems too much of a coincidence, so I would not be surprised if the machine comes back with a replacement CPU.

I have the RMA number now, and am currently awaiting pick-up.

 

[Starwolf]

If you're getting data error failures, it's the ram or storage. I've had Pc error issues in years gone by,and it was always ram or storage. Cpus don't really fail,and motherboards are robust as well. Saying that I did have a motherboard go up in smoke because I overclocked the fsb too much

The machine is going back to OcUK for repair, so we will find out what the issue is soon enough.

 

[Starwolf]

Update:

The machine was collected by DPD on Thursday 18th April.
I have POD of it arriving at OcUK early the following morning - Friday 19th April.
It is now a week later - in fact, 6 working days have passed, and I have heard no update from OcUK.

Does anybody know how long a system RMA is likely to take to process?

• Raised ticket - took 4 working days to respond.
• Agreed RMA - took 5 more working days before it was collected
• System back for repair - 6 more working days and counting...

Is there any way to get an update from OcUK without waiting until Monday and phoning support? I hoped that there would be a web portal that I can use to check the RMA ticket, but I cannot find one. The only online route that I can see is raising another ticket (which they don't encourage, and I fear it would take another 4 days before it is answered anyhow...)

 

[Starwolf]

The website suggests their usual turnaround once the hardware has been received is 72 hours (https://help.overclockers.co.uk/hc/...29-What-warranty-comes-with-my-OcUK-PC-System) noting that it can be more in busy periods.

If you haven't heard from them I think it's worth chasing up with a call.

I'm not aware of a ticket status portal but I haven't had to RMA anything; does seek like a good suggestion for them if it isn't just buried away somewhere.

I gave them a call yesterday to chase up on progress. The guy taking the call put me on hold and went to check... when they returned he advised me that they 'had just got it out of the box' and if I raise a ticket in 3 days time I would be able to get an update.

That meant the system had arrived at OcUK on 19th April, and they had begun to work on it on 29th April - that's 10 calendar days, which included 6 full business days, before doing anything. If I am lucky, they may have fixed things by the end of the week, but I am not holding my breath.

 

[Starwolf]

I got a notification with your original message in it, suspecting a memory issue, but I suspect that you then saw earlier in the thread that I had run MemTest86 against it and encountered no errors, and so edited the message.

I opened the ticket for the issue back on 5th April, so it really is a long time without a system.

Whilst I don't use it for work as such, some of the activities that I do on the machine are a small source of income, and I have been without it for virtually all of April. I used to work as part of an IT support team at a corporate, and we used to get hardware issues fixed by the next day - when things get busy the very least that we did was keep the user up-to-date on progress. When I called OcUK, apparently they had just opened the box (having had it more than a week without working on it), so told me I should call them back in 3 days.

 

[Starwolf]

Did you ask why they had only got round to looking at the PC?

I hope you get a better update when you check in with them in 3 days but saying that I would expect them to get in touch with you in 3 days or sooner once they have found the issue rather than saying for you to chase them in 3 days.

Where I work we update engineers often even if there is no update just so they know we have not forgotten about their issue\query\problem and that we are still looking in to it.

I did not ask why it had taken so long for them to get around to looking at the machine, as I'm pretty certain they would have blamed it on the 'being very busy' - having worked in a support role in the past I would immediately take that to mean ' understaffed', and there is nothing that the poor guy answering the phone can do about that.

I've opened a new Request ticket asking for an update, mentioning that the consensus on this forum is that a RAM issue is most likely, and if that is the case OcUK should have diagnosed and resolved the issue by now, and updated me about it. As I have heard nothing I asked what their diagnosis is, what their plan of action is, and what timescale they expect before returning the system in a working state.

Given the confirmation email says "We aim to respond within 36 hours, however in some cases, it may take up to 10 days for us to respond to your request" I am not expecting an immediate answer! If I still worked at a corporate, I suspect that I would have raised a Customer Complaint by now...

 

[Starwolf]

OcUK emailed me today to advise that they had identified and resolved the issue yesterday, and that the machine is scheduled to be collected for return to me today - as it is a holiday weekend, this means that I should receive the machine on Tuesday.

The fault was with the CPU, which OcUK have replaced in order to return the machine to stable operation.

Many thanks to all of you that suggested tests to diagnose the fault or eliminate possible causes.