[SOLVED] Kernel-power 41 investigation.

S3n · 25 Aug 2022 at 20:53

Hi folks.
I recently built a new system and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the root cause of this Kernel-power 41 is. I've not had time to extensively test the system since building it earlier this week, however, whenever I play Battlefield 2042 the game will crash after approximately 5 minutes. I initially thought this was due to poor cooling (I had a completely inadequate CPU cooler), however after upgrading CPU and case cooling the problem persists.

My second area of investigation was XMP profile for my RAM, disabling XMP did nothing to fix the issue.
Next, I thought that perhaps under heavy load on both CPU and GPU my PSU was giving out - I ran FurMark's GPU and CPU benchmark simultaneously - 350W on GPU, 115W on CPU and no crashes - although no spikes either.
Windows 10 memory diagnosis - no errors found.
Drivers updated, windows updated.

System specs
GPU: RTX 3080Ti
CPU: RYZEN 7 5800x (@stock clocks)
Motherboard: ASRock X570m Pro4
BIOS Version: 3.40
RAM: 32GB G.SKILL F4-3600C18D-32GVK (XMP currently disabled)
PSU: Seasonic Focus GX 850W
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox MB311L ARGB
Operating System & Version: WINDOWS 10 Home
GPU Drivers: GEFORCE GAME READY DRIVER - WHQL Driver Version: 516.94

Currently as I am writing this I am testing the system in another game (Escape from Tarkov) and I am still not crashing....

Does anyone have any ideas on what I could do next to narrow this issue down?

Thanks!

Dg834man · 25 Aug 2022 at 21:22

Had pretty much the same problem with a 3800x stable in all benchmarks and stress tests but apex legends would crash after a few minutes, in my case one of the cores wasn't stable at high boost clocks stress and benchmarks/stress tests rarely catch these problems they load the cpu more than a game and cpu doesn't boost as high. i could mitigate the problem entirely by setting lower fixed clocks using ryzen master than what the cpu would normal boost too, i returned the cpu.

Tetras · 25 Aug 2022 at 21:36

What happens when it crashes, can you describe it?

PBO is disabled, I assume?

lsg1r · 25 Aug 2022 at 21:50

According to asrock website there is a newer bios (3.7) out, so probably worth updating that.

Quick google seems to point to sound card drivers, I've seen issues reported relating to realtek audio drivers/software (your board has it) and iirc it's could cause crashing.
Checked your ssd?

S3n · 25 Aug 2022 at 21:59

@Dg834man @Tetras @lsg1r

Thank you all for suggestions. PBO is on Auto fyi (not changed).
I have updated all my drivers (incl soundcard - this did not fix it).
I have not tested my M.2 SSD.

With that said I have managed to fix this issue (actually just before your reply @lsg1r ) - my mobo shipped with 3.4 version of the BIOS (which is meant to be compatible with 5000 series Ryzens), however there was clearly something it didn't like. After flashing the BIOS to 3.7 and enabling XMP, system has been fully stable.

As a last test I launched and loaded a multiplayer session of BF2042 (since this is where crashes occured after 2-5 minutes) and left it running for about 20 minutes with no issues. During this time I decided to test whether I was having voltage spikes on my mobo, however no voltage spiking was noted (besides minor 12V changes):

Anyway, all fixed now. As always, the simplest solution is usually the correct one

thanks for the help folks!