Swapped i5 for i7, could it be faulty?

[Phil87]

Edit: I found that the following steps helped to fix this problem (there was nothing wrong with the CPU):
- Check stability with Memtest86, Prime95 etc
- Reset BIOS settings to default
- Reinstall Windows

Original post:
Hi all, I replaced my i5 3570K for an i7 3770 and I've had a couple of stability issues which make me wonder if the new CPU could be faulty. The main reason for the upgrade was that the i5 was struggling with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but it's noticeably smoother with the i7. The full spec is in my signature, and nothing is overclocked unless you count enabling XMP in the BIOS.

I've seen the game crash to desktop a few times, mainly when when it loads a new area or autosaves, but I had a couple of similar errors before the CPU swap when returning to the main menu, so I'm not sure if it's the game which is to blame. I've managed to play it for a few hours over the last couple of days with no more issues though.

Most worryingly my PC completely locked up around a day after the upgrade - the screen froze and nothing would respond, so I had to press the reset button which actually turned the system off, turned it back on and it seemed like nothing was wrong after that. This was while watching a video on TouTube and with Steam downloading a game in the background, so nothing too taxing on the system. There was nothing in Event Viewer or BluescreenView to give any info about the cause of the freeze.

Also I ran an older version of Prime95 and it was giving rounding errors on basically every thread, at around the same time which makes me think that could be a false positive based on the info on their website. I ran it again with the latest version and there were no errors after around an hour (these were just running the default blend test). I also ran the Windows memory diagnostic, and Memtest86 for around an hour (one pass) with no errors.

Does any of this point to the i7 being faulty?

 

[Phil87]

I think I've solved this one myself - the problem was my misunderstanding of what happens when you enable XMP in the BIOS. I noticed yesterday that this also changes the turbo ratio settings for the CPU, which allows all four cores to go up to 3.9, whereas with default settings they can individually hit 3.9 but with all together they only go up to 3.7. So my mistake of blindly enabling XMP effectively overclocked the CPU slightly, and although it seemed to increase the core voltage slightly it clearly wasn't enough.

All I had to do was set the turbo ratio back to auto, and now all seems fine although with a ~5% reduction in CPU performance, but that doesn't seem to be a noticeable difference. I think the lesson to take from this is to understand exactly what a BIOS setting does before changing it

 

[Phil87]

Yeah I might have a look at bumping it up a bit, but for now I'll leave it at stock to make sure the problem is actually fixed. Yesterday before I made the change it was failing Prime95 within minutes, although a few days ago it ran for an hour with no errors. If I can go for a week or 2 without any game crashes I'll be happy that it's fixed.

 

[Phil87]

Happy new year everyone . I've had some more issues with this today, thought it was stable but had a complete lockup this morning while watching YouTube. The system completely froze and wouldn't restart, it wouldn't even respond to the reset button so I had to hold in the power button to turn it off.

After doing some digging I found out that enabling XMP actually overclocks the memory controller on the CPU, so that might explain why the system still wasn't stable. Maybe the IMC on my old 3570K was better than the one in this 3770, does that make sense?

 

[Phil87]

Sorry for not replying, I tried entering the memory settings manually instead of XMP which seemed to make it stable, for over a week anyway. I just had another blue screen today while watching Youtube and got errors in Prime95, so set all BIOS settings back to defaults (1333 MHz RAM). The cooler is a Hyper 212 Evo and temps barely hit 60 under load, haven't touched the voltage. The RAM is Corsair Vengeance DDR3 rated at 2133 MHz. The 3770 is non-K but is 2nd hand, so I don't know its history but assume it wasn't tampered with, probably came from an office PC or something.

 

[Phil87]

I ran Memtest for 1 pass when I first discovered this problem and had no errors. I know that's not enough to prove the memory is stable but it certainly seemed to be more likely to cause errors in Prime95 when XMP was enabled, so at least I can get somewhat consistent results from running that. No issues so far with default BIOS settings, so I'm going to keep it like that for now.

I'm hesitant to increase the voltage, partly because the system was unstable at basically no load i.e. playing a YouTube video. Would increasing the voltage offset have any effect when the CPU isn't under load?

 

[Phil87]

I'm still having occasional crashes, a couple last last weekend and a blue screen just now. The blue screen code was 0x00000124, caused by driver hal.dll, crash address ntoskrnl.exe+1b3440. One thing I've noticed every time it crashes is that in Event Viewer there is always a "EnhancedStorage-EhStorTcgDrv - A TCG Command has returned an error" one second before a "Kernel-Power" error. Could that mean this is a hard drive issue?

 

[Phil87]

Here is the minidump: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YT3CstXBsGzYPmqH1OxiSpLf3QeDEUH5/view?usp=sharing

Here is the memory info from CPU-Z: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19aCsdoXIj_Y-3EF01KNMyffKd7A3NgNe/view?usp=sharing

All the BIOS settings are at default, so I'm not looking at XMP or anything until I can figure out what the problem is.

 

[Phil87]

I had another freeze yesterday evening, it wouldn't restart by itself and there was no blue screen, just the usual storage error following by kernal power error in event viewer. I also noticed the HDD activity LED was on constantly while it was frozen.

I ran the latest version of Memtest86 overnight, it took around 4 hours to do the default 4 passes with no errors, is that enough to assume the memory is ok? I had to find that in the log file after restarting because there was no signal on the monitor when I checked on it this morning. I've seen that happen before with Memtest so can only assume the GPU went to sleep after so long with nothing changing on the screen, unless that could point to a problem with the graphics card. The keyboard responded to num lock so the PC didn't freeze, it just didn't display anything at that point.

Also ran Prime95 overnight around a week ago, which went for about 9 hours with no errors.

 

[Phil87]

Yes I have the latest BIOS, and the memory is just running at the default 1333Mhz for now. I haven't tried updating chipset drivers yet, can they be downloaded directly from Intel or just from the mobo manufacturer?

 

[Phil87]

I think illI get the hard drive changed first, if that doesn't work I'll reinstall Windows (didn't do that after CPU change), next thing after that might be chipset drivers.

 

[Phil87]

I've changed the secondary hard drive to a 4TB Seagate, but got another blue screen just now. Here is all the info from BluescreenView:

==================================================
Dump File : 021019-6656-01.dmp
Crash Time : 10/02/2019 12:42:39 PM
Bug Check String : ATTEMPTED_EXECUTE_OF_NOEXECUTE_MEMORY
Bug Check Code : 0x000000fc
Parameter 1 : ffff800f`861cc4f0
Parameter 2 : 8a000001`466008e3
Parameter 3 : ffffc908`696bc4f0
Parameter 4 : 00000000`00000003
Caused By Driver : tcpip.sys
Caused By Address : tcpip.sys+6bf10
File Description :
Product Name :
Company :
File Version :
Processor : x64
Crash Address : ntoskrnl.exe+1b3440
Stack Address 1 :
Stack Address 2 :
Stack Address 3 :
Computer Name :
Full Path : C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\021019-6656-01.dmp
Processors Count : 8
Major Version : 15
Minor Version : 17763
Dump File Size : 679,716
Dump File Time : 10/02/2019 12:44:37 PM
==================================================

I'm not sure if I've seen this one before, but a quick search online showed that it could be related to corrupt Windows files or drivers among other things. Would this be a good point to try a fresh install of Windows?

 

[Phil87]

I think the problem had been solved with a reinstall of Windows - no problems for over a week now. So it seems there were two problems, the first was that the system was unstable with XMP enabled or when setting memory settings manually based on the XMP profile. I think the 2nd problem was driver related, something to do with the network drivers for my VPN probably.

So if anyone else has similar problems with random freezing and blue screens I can recommend a few things (in no particular order):

- Check stability with Memtest86, Prime95 etc
- Reset BIOS settings to default
- Reinstall Windows