Apps are crashing, Windows is crashing, my heart rate is crashing and my pc has shat the bed. Please God, help me.

[Bella_Cia0]

So recently my pc has been absolutely shitting the bed and I have no idea what the problem is. First I thought it was Windows 11, so I went back to 10. Didn't make a difference. Programs from normal apps to games will have screen freezes where the system just doesnt respond (sometimes alt-tabbing would kinda fix it but not really) for a few seconds. Games would have random huge ping spikes in combination with this, and would occasionally crash, oddly, usually while they were running in the background. Had more than one occasion where windows has crashed entirely, got a very nasty BSOD, the kind where the crash screen shows up twice side by side with a bunch of funky looking shit underneath the blue. All of this has started after running folding at home on my pc, which I have since uninstalled. I never ran it at high speeds for long. I left my pc underclocked while folding for several hours at a time. I know it's not a monitor thing, I have reinstalled windows, I've reinstalled the problematic games. I haven't noticed any troubling visual artifacting that would resemble a gpu issue, and my card is basically brand new. I have absolutely no clue what the hell is wrong. Should I reseat my CPU/GPU or something?? No temp issues that I know of, everything seems well within spec. No throttling. An app crash told me I had an unhandled exception. No clue how to interpret that.

Some things worth note; I have at one point removed both the chipset heatsink, and the VRM heatsink. Both were put back on.

Rig is a R7 5700x

RX 6700

32 gb DDR4 3200

Asus TUF X570

[Heats with Nvidia]

The easiest check is to remove one of the RAM Sticks and check if it still crashes. If yes, try the other one. Also checking the S.M.A.R.T values of your bootdrive is not a bad idea.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Try updating or just re-flashing the BIOS.

 

Then start switching out components. Start with the GPU. Hopefully you have an old one lying around, or can borrow one from a friend.

 

Also, if you haven't already, start monitoring temps/fan speeds/clock speeds etc with HWinfo to see if anything stands out.

[Bella_Cia0]

@Hairless Monkey Boy I think Im gonna do what you and Heats said first. Im gonna check the RAM. If that doesn't change anything, I'm gonna check the VRMs on the Mobo and GPU, and then the Chipset. Chipset would kinda make sense because my boot drive goes thru the chipset rather than direct to the cpu.

[Bella_Cia0]

ok @Hairless Monkey Boy@Heats with Nvidia Tentatively I wanna say removing a RAM stick may have fixed the instability. This kinda makes sense, given that the issue was primarily happening during multitasking. Next I'm gonna try the other stick by itself to see if that crashes

[191x7]

memtest86+ or Passmark memtest86, test your RAM, 1 stick by 1.

[Bella_Cia0]

When testing the other stick, which is not currently installed, should I put it back into the slot it came from, or should I put it in the slot that the functioning one is currently inhabiting?

[Bella_Cia0]

Running memtest now. Thanks so much for the help btw, I love this forum. Just curious, how long should it take?

[Bella_Cia0]

@191x7 initial testing isn't promising. The stick i figured would be fine had 6 errors. will post full results when the second stick is done

[191x7]

33 minutes ago, Bella_Cia0 said:

@191x7 initial testing isn't promising. The stick i figured would be fine had 6 errors. will post full results when the second stick is done

You can stop the testing immediately after an error has been found, you don't need to run the whole test suite.

 

Also, if the RAM shows errors while running XMP, it might not if XMP is disabled or a lower profile has been selected.

[Bella_Cia0]

ok so second stick passed! @191x7 what should I do about the problematic stick? Return it? Return the whole kit? Change settings in bios?

[191x7]

1 minute ago, Bella_Cia0 said:

ok so second stick passed! @191x7 what should I do about the problematic stick? Return it? Return the whole kit? Change settings in bios?

If the RAM was purchased as a kit, you have to RMA the whole kit. But it's best to ask the store / official repair service etc.

Or, if you have the funds, you could buy new RAM (3600 this time, draws the most out of a Zen3 CPU), RMA the old, and when you get the replacement you can either sell it or use it as additional RAM.

[Bella_Cia0]

@191x7 Gotcha. So what I'm gonna do is test both sticks at a lower DOCP profile, im gonna keep testing both at lower and lower profiles until i either reach 2133, or they both pass. Actually, I just changed the bios setting to AUTO from DOCP. Let's see if that works. I'll test scientifically until this shit starts functioning again lol, I don't wanna buy more RAM

[191x7]

21 minutes ago, Bella_Cia0 said:

@191x7 Gotcha. So what I'm gonna do is test both sticks at a lower DOCP profile, im gonna keep testing both at lower and lower profiles until i either reach 2133, or they both pass. Actually, I just changed the bios setting to AUTO from DOCP. Let's see if that works. I'll test scientifically until this shit starts functioning again lol, I don't wanna buy more RAM

Look, if it were a compatibility issue between the RAM (the loaded profile) and the motherboard/CPU, both modules would experience similar or the same issue.

But if in the same slot with the same profile one module from the same kit works fine and the other doesn't, the other is defective and the kit should be RMA-d.

[Bella_Cia0]

well good news, both sticks have passed memtest. Hoping this resolves things. Thanks so much everyone!!

[HuckleberryGuilty]

1 hour ago, Bella_Cia0 said:

well good news, both sticks have passed memtest. Hoping this resolves things. Thanks so much everyone!!

just a reminder, You could mark your post as solved by pressing a checkmark icon at the post you consider as a solution.

[Bella_Cia0]

4 hours ago, HuckleberryGuilty said:

just a reminder, You could mark your post as solved by pressing a checkmark icon at the post you consider as a solution.

ended up doing this. Seems like I've actually fixed it.

[191x7]

59 minutes ago, Bella_Cia0 said:

ended up doing this. Seems like I've actually fixed it.

Just mark the module which showed issues so if strange things start happening you know where to look. I wouldn't trust a module that showed issues... But maybe it was just poorly seated or the slot was dirty...