Various and Constant BSOD's.

Testing the PSU is based on three reasons. First and foremost it's a part of the rig and you want to rule out everything that you can to help narrow down the cause. Second, any PSU, no matter how good it's supposed to be, can be faulty in some way, particularly in the intermittent current way Oracle mentioned. Thirdly, that PSU does not provide 430W on the 12v rail. It either provides around 330W or 380W depending on which version it is.

If it's drawing 390W from the wall and working at 80% efficiency, it's putting out 312W. If working at 85% efficiency, it's putting out 331.5W.

To be honest I'm surprised that rig is drawing so much from the wall. So despite having suspicions originally based more around the second point (something faulty) - that wattage seems close enough to its maximum 12v output to warrant suspecting it may also be failing due to not having enough grunt.

Could be a mixture of both. Or another component of course. But don't exclude the PSU from testing just because you thought it would have plenty of extra juice available. It doesn't, according to your wall draw figure and the effective output of those CXs. It's pretty tight, apparently.
 
Danny75 said:
Testing the PSU is based on three reasons. First and foremost it's a part of the rig and you want to rule out everything that you can to help narrow down the cause. Second, any PSU, no matter how good it's supposed to be, can be faulty in some way, particularly in the intermittent current way Oracle mentioned. Thirdly, that PSU does not provide 430W on the 12v rail. It either provides around 330W or 380W depending on which version it is.

If it's drawing 390W from the wall and working at 80% efficiency, it's putting out 312W. If working at 85% efficiency, it's putting out 331.5W.

To be honest I'm surprised that rig is drawing so much from the wall. So despite having suspicions originally based more around the second point (something faulty) - that wattage seems close enough to its maximum 12v output to warrant suspecting it may also be failing due to not having enough grunt.

Could be a mixture of both. Or another component of course. But don't exclude the PSU from testing just because you thought it would have plenty of extra juice available. It doesn't, according to your wall draw figure and the effective output of those CXs. It's pretty tight, apparently.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your detailed reply, it's not 390 W, that was a typo for 290 W, sorry.

And that's with the GTX 960 installed. I've not got that installed and still I get BSOD'S. I don't know what it's drawing now as I lent the wattage meter from a friend. Didn't want to spend £17 for a rearly used device.
 
Danny75, yep I too thought 390 was a lot for that system spec.

bAdbUd: Danny75 is right, your PSU is almost on the limit.

Edit: OK scrap that, 290 seems more reasonable.
 
After a reinstall and installing no drivers except lan driver to install prerequisites for "Intel Diagnostic Tool" and then running it for 2 hours I've had no BSOD's.

This build has rarely lasted more than 2 hours doing this test, so now I'm leading down the route of driver issues.

Which driver?
Which driver in which combination?

My first try is going to be just doing MS Win7 updates and then keep running the same tests that have failed previously and caused BSOD'S.

Let's see how far I get under a controlled install, test, install regime.
 
Driver's possibly ruled out, I'm getting random resets, without BSOD'S, with just a basic install.

This now leads me down the route of mobo.
 
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After reinstalling Win7 and testing for two hours, I didn't get any BSOD's but the machine did randomly reboot itself.

I'm now installing Win7 updates to see if I get any BSOD's.
 
UPDATE:

Prime Blend Test produced one error within 5 minutes, I stopped the test and rebooted and started it again.

Code: 
[Wed Apr 08 18:31:49 2015]
Self-test 12K passed!
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

Running it again produced these errors with 20 minutes and then BSOD

Code: 
[Wed Apr 08 19:50:15 2015]
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 4.460210523e+285, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
Self-test 896K passed!
Self-test 32K passed!
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 2.173430923e+189, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

I have a sneaky suspicion that my CPU could be an RMA'ed component as it's clocked at 3.7 GHz not the stock 3.5 GHz, although it's Boost value is 3.9 GHz so it may just be that.

However would you expect to get a new CPU that was clocking higher than it's stated stock value?

Further Information:
I installed Ubuntu anyway, no loss in doing that, then I ran Prime for a good 10 hours overnight along with 'stress' and finding that the machine is still up and running after being left on overnight.

However I'm not sure of a few things, even though Prime was running and causing some load when looking at 'top' and CPU heat was hovering around 45 C, indicating it's being loaded as the idle temp is around 20 C. I'm not sure even in this situation the machine is being stressed in the same way, so not having any errors doesn't mean there still isn't an issue with hardware. Although it could mean a Driver issue in Windows.

Also:
The machine when first turned on seems to function normally for up to 2 hours, then at around the 2 hour mark the BSOD's start, after this when rebooting it will BSOD within 5 to 10 mins constantly until left off for a good half hour.

BSOD'S in this Order:

Code: 
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT	
SPECIAL_POOL_DETECTED_MEMORY_CORRUPTION	
PAGE_FAULT_BEYOND_END_OF_ALLOCATION	
BAD_POOL_HEADER	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED	
NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM	
BAD_POOL_HEADER	
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION	
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION	
BAD_POOL_HEADER	
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT	
SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED	
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL	
NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
 
CPUs are overclocked via changing how the motherboard works with them - any overclock from the CPU perspective is lost the moment the CPU loses power.

At default Intel CPUs will usually boost from base->boost depending on the number of active cores and thermal conditions so if its 3.5 base, 3.9 boost you will see values inbetween depending on what it is doing - with 3 threads active its likely to be running around 3.7.

You seem to be ignoring the most likely cause of the problem in that it is related to voltage settings - higher end hardware especially when your pushing larger amounts of RAM won't always play nice with the default voltage settings.
 
Rroff said:
CPUs are overclocked via changing how the motherboard works with them - any overclock from the CPU perspective is lost the moment the CPU loses power.

At default Intel CPUs will usually boost from base->boost depending on the number of active cores and thermal conditions so if its 3.5 base, 3.9 boost you will see values in between depending on what it is doing - with 3 threads active its likely to be running around 3.7.

You seem to be ignoring the most likely cause of the problem in that it is related to voltage settings - higher end hardware especially when your pushing larger amounts of RAM won't always play nice with the default voltage settings.
Click to expand...

I haven't ignored it, I just haven't tried changing the voltages yet.

What voltage setting would you recommend I start with and work up towards to try and find a stable threshold?
 
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NOTE: The system is BSOD'ing with just the bare bones installed, the GTX960 isn't installed whilst I'm troubleshooting.

In fact it's literally being breadboarded.

I reinstalled Win7 last night, no drivers, no updates installed and ran Prime95 Blend Test and it BSOD at just over 4 hours, no errors in Prime seen.

Voltage to CPU set to 1.2v and Memory set to 1.5v, boost turned off.

My next test will be changing the PSU to a Corsair CP-9020077-UK Builder Series 650W CS650M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 80 Plus Gold Power Supply Unit, later this evening and test again, if after that I still get a BSOD then I'll replace the Motherboard.

I've already ordered a replacement CPU which I'll get next week and if none of the above resolves the problem then the CPU will be the only item that hasn't been replaced left to test.
 
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Just as a note, a while ago I found this list which I saved:

BSOD codes for overclocking
BSOD Codes for i7 x58 chipset
0x101 = increase vcore
0x124 = increase/decrease QPI/VTT first, if not increase/decrease vcore...have to test to see which one it is
0x0A = unstable RAM/IMC, increase QPI first, if that doesn't work increase vcore
0x1A = Memory management error. It usually means a bad stick of Ram. Test with Memtest or whatever you prefer. Try raising your Ram voltage
0x1E = increase vcore
0x3B = increase vcore
0x3D = increase vcore
0xD1 = QPI/VTT, increase/decrease as necessary, can also be unstable Ram, raise Ram voltage
0x9C = QPI/VTT most likely, but increasing vcore has helped in some instances
0x50 = RAM timings/Frequency or uncore multi unstable, increase RAM voltage or adjust QPI/VTT, or lower uncore if you're higher than 2x
0x109 = Not enough or too Much memory voltage
0x116 = Low IOH (NB) voltage, GPU issue (most common when running multi-GPU/overclocking GPU)
0x7E = Corrupted OS file, possibly from overclocking. Run sfc /scannow and chkdsk /r

BSOD Codes for SandyBridge
0x124 = add/remove vcore or QPI/VTT voltage (usually Vcore, once it was QPI/VTT)
0x101 = add more vcore
0x50 = RAM timings/Frequency add DDR3 voltage or add QPI/VTT
0x1E = add more vcore
0x3B = add more vcore
0xD1 = add QPI/VTT voltage
“0x9C = QPI/VTT most likely, but increasing vcore has helped in some instances”
0X109 = add DDR3 voltage
0x0A = add QPI/VTT voltage

It might not be perfect, but it could give you an idea of what's going on.

I would suggest that as your PSU is heating up the output of it is becoming less regular and it's dropping the voltage to the RAM (and other components).
 
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After three weeks of meticulous testing and replacing parts all to no avail with diagnosing the cause of the BSOD's the culprit of the problems has been determined to be the CPU.

I've recently found out that when I run memtest from a clean startup no errors are shown on the CPU, however after leaving the PC on until it BSOD's and then performing a memtest I get thousands of errors on the CPU. Also if I turn the machine off for 30 minutes and then run a memtest again no errors are shown.

I get a new CPU on Wednesday, and if as assumed that is the cause I'll report back with an update.
 
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