Lots of BSODS with no obvious cause, most of them not logged, PERFMON never finishes

[Ciel115]

Been wrestling with BSODS and laptop not wanting to reliably connect to my eGPU for almost a month now.

 

Out of dozens of BSODS, almost all of them sit at 0% indefinitely when it says "just collecting some info before you restart" or w/e. Only saw the % go up a couple times and likewise when I look for the logs on BSODS there are only a couple, here's those: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NXiL92ToOHBHAs6CmgsTMDIqHLjk4GVU/view?usp=sharing

 

PERFMON never finishes collecting data so I can't provide that, it just says "collecting for 60 seconds" forever. I ran the cmd as administrator, not sure what else I could be doing wrong, or if that itself is indicative of a problem?

 

I can't reliably replicate the BSODS but these are some patterns I've recognized:

 

Almost all of BSODS happen when my laptop is connected to the eGPU. An issue that started around the same time is that my laptop often struggles to connect to the eGPU. Sometimes it will connect/disconnect repeatedly until eventually it BSODS. Sometimes it will connect/disconnect repeatedly and after a few minutes settle on being not connected or connected. Sometimes it works great and is solidly connected immediately. When it connects (either immediately or otherwise) I can game hard for hours on it no problem, but one other pattern I think I've recognized is that BSODS are common 5-10min AFTER a gaming session. Like I'll finish gaming and leave to grab some food and come back to a BSOD, or I'll finish gaming and just be clicking around firefox or discord for 5min before BSOD in my face. Only a couple times has it crashed while running the GPU hard.

 

I wanted to blame the eGPU unit (Razer Core X) or the GPU in there (RTX 2070) since these issues showed up at the same time and feel connected, but there have been a few times that I got a BSOD while the laptop was not connected to the eGPU. Once while trying to do a system restore, once randomly while playing Rimworld, and once tonight immediately after i logged in after rebooting from a post-gaming BSOD.

 

I took it (laptop + eGPU) to a PC repair shop and it basically ran flawlessly for them and they couldn't get it to fail, so I wondered about a dirty power issue at my house and tried a UPS unit with voltage regulation etc, I thought that solved it as it gave me 4 days of more stability than I've seen in the past month, but the same issues returned randomly last night.

 

• OS - Windows 10
• x64
• What OS was originaly installed on the system? Win 10
• Is the OS an OEM version (came pre-installed on system) or full retail version (YOU purchased it from a retailer)? Pre-installed
• Age of system (hardware) - bought new in late 2018
• Age of OS installation - have you re-installed the OS? 2018, no reinstall
• CPU model - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
• Video Card model - Nvidia Geforce RTX 2070 8G, internal = Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620
• MotherBoard - (if NOT a laptop) is laptop
• Power Supply - brand & wattage (if laptop, skip this) Razer Core X is 650W
• System Manufacturer Razer
• Exact model number (if OEM or laptop) RZ09-0239
• Laptop or Desktop? Laptop

Any ideas that might help me narrow down where the problem is would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

 

 

[bob.blunderton]

Are you sure it's not overheating at all, as in, you use it somewhere different than when they tested it?  If it feels really toasty, consider getting a 'cooling pad' for it that fits under it, has fans and such.

If your eGPU dock is causing an issue, maybe there's an issue with that port on your motherboard.

 

Sounds like your power supply might be fine under load but might be sagging voltages while idling after a gaming session - though this isn't very common.

I've seen this happen before, it's not common at all but it DOES happen.  Power supplies don't always fail under load.

You can log your hardware voltages with various software, I think HWinfo will do that.

 

I'm not 100% certain there's any one thing, but I'd consider replacing that power brick temporarily to test out and see if there's an issue with it 'getting tired' AFTER a gaming session, at-least you'll know if the issue is in your motherboard or not.

[Ciel115]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure if it's overheating, it does get very hot to the touch, although I've used it for 2.5 years in pretty much the same way. I installed HWinfo and the CPU temps seem to spike very easily at little things. I went to play some Overwatch to see if I could get it to crash after, and just opening the Battle.net launcher made my CPU core temps all hit the high 90s (degrees C) and activate their thermal throttling, although it was just momentary spike. They were high a lot while I played the game but the max temp listed for this CPU is 100C and the throttling kept them from exceeding that.

 

I couldn't get it to actually BSOD for now though.

 

I don't think I'll try to modify the eGPU dock with a new PSU since it's under a protection plan, but I did order a 2nd Razer Core X eGPU to test so if it's an issue with the dock hopefully I'll find out, as much as I wanted to try to figure out where the problem was before I started buying crap.

 

[bob.blunderton]

12 hours ago, Ciel115 said:

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure if it's overheating, it does get very hot to the touch, although I've used it for 2.5 years in pretty much the same way. I installed HWinfo and the CPU temps seem to spike very easily at little things. I went to play some Overwatch to see if I could get it to crash after, and just opening the Battle.net launcher made my CPU core temps all hit the high 90s (degrees C) and activate their thermal throttling, although it was just momentary spike. They were high a lot while I played the game but the max temp listed for this CPU is 100C and the throttling kept them from exceeding that.

 

I couldn't get it to actually BSOD for now though.

 

I don't think I'll try to modify the eGPU dock with a new PSU since it's under a protection plan, but I did order a 2nd Razer Core X eGPU to test so if it's an issue with the dock hopefully I'll find out, as much as I wanted to try to figure out where the problem was before I started buying crap.

 

The power brick I was mentioning was the one your laptop uses to get power from the wall, the AC adapter.

The machine getting too hot is an issue.  It shouldn't get so hot you can't hold your finger to the outside of the unit.

Make sure it's clean first off, and see if there's a way you can cut down the max boost a bit in BIOS so it doesn't try to boil water or your lap.

When components get hot, they 'leak' more electricity as heat just from being hot, so wasted power (heat) increases with temps, and voltage regulators on the motherboard work less well when they get hot just like many other things.  You end up having a self-feeding self-exacerbating issue where it snowballs and the machine crashes.

Sure, something *COULD* be defective with the eGPU setup if crashes DO NOT happen with it completely disconnected from the system, but if they still happen without it hooked up then you either have a heat issue, a power issue, or some driver is crashing it out.

You can always look in the Windows system logs in control panel under ADVANCED/administrative tools, you can google how to look up the hardware event logs (it's in the event viewer, poke around under a few different things - system is a good place to start in the event viewer - and look for the date/time you had the issue.  This is separate from a crash dump, this is Windows itself saying you had a crash of sorts.  You'll see stop or warning errors when you have a problem, and it'll then say 'the previous shutdown at xx:xx was unplanned', etc, as it rebooted.

If the error is all over the place and not just one thing crashing all the time, then it's likely some type of power or heat issue; but if it's the same thing every time you likely have an issue with either a driver or the part of the PC the driver is controlling (or a conflict with another driver).

 

See if there isn't a forum for Razor core laptops on Razor's website, they might have hit the issue there already.  It's a good lead, anyway.