BSOD error code 156 and 257

Vahiel · September 22, 2024

Hello

I built my desktop pc around march this year. However, since I built it I regularly get BSODs, pointing to Machine Check errors. After weeks googling and trying to fix it, nothing has worked up to now.

I have ran memory integrity tests, updated my bios and all my drivers, ...

I don't see any problems with temperatures, as they rarely go over 70°C.

When I go to event viewer, over the past week I see BugcheckCodes 156 and 257.

All my drivers are up to date.
I have backup power.
OS - Windows 11: bought from retailer. Never reïnstalled
Age of system: all from march 2024
CPU: Intel i5 14600KF
GPU: NVidea GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
MotherBoard: Gigabyte B760 GAMING X DDR4
BIOS Version F11d, 09/05/2024.
Power Supply - brand & wattage (if laptop, skip this)
System Manufacturer: Self built

I put some of the minidump files in a zip file in the following location:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qW6rsfvRxEZHCWeyr3WNMOWLPPk_lwJ3?usp=drive_link

When I do the system diagnostics report, it stays on the "collecting data for 60 seconds for a long time (30 minutes +).

Bjoolz · September 23, 2024

You are getting Clock_Watchdog_Violation and Machine_Check_Exception crashes. Clock_Watchdog_Violation means that a CPU core was hung (frozen). This can be a faulty CPU, but it's more often an issue of an unstable overclock/undervolt. So if anything is overclocked or undervolted, remove it. The Machine_Check_Exception is a CPU hardware error, but it's a bit annoying because of you aren't really supposed to get this error anymore. It was for all intents and purposes replaced by WHEA after Windows XP. The only exceptions are if either the WHEA routine wasn't initialized yet or if the CPU's error record was empty (The CPU logs errors and PCIe devices, though not sure if MCE can do PCIe errors because it's so old). This is almost always a CPU issue. I also can't really debug these properly (Like looking at what in the CPU had an issue) because the information it provides when it comes to what went wrong hasn't really been relevant for almost 20 years.

So a faulty CPU would be the main suspect. F11d is a beta BIOS (BIOS versions that end in a letter are beta versions) which I normally don't like, but because of the recent Intel issues you kind of have to because that version has the fixed microcode. I also saw in the dump files that your crashes happened on F10 as well so I'm going to rule out that the BIOS is a beta could be the cause.

Vahiel · September 25, 2024

I didn't overclock anything, I left all cpu clock settings as the bios defaults. I indeed got these issues with Bios version F8, F10 and now F11b, so I'm pretty sure that's not where the problem lies.

So, basically I just got fucked with a bad CPU? This is probably not enough for a warranty I guess.

Thanks for the help anyways!