troubleshoot PC keeps closing apps randomly.

[JamesCP5]

I upgraded my PC around 3 months ago from an i9 9th gen into a i9 14th gen.

All was going well up until 2-3 weeks ago where I noticed some apps keep randomly closing. I started to notice it around the time Schedule I had an update so I assumed the problem was tied to the game. As days go by I start playing other games like, Dota 2 and Minecraft, and the issue kept happening consistently. Its like around 5-10 of gameplay, the game closes. I also started noticing my browsers become unstable. Every 30-45 minutes of browsing or even just watching videos on Youtube, the browsers (both Brave and Chrome) crash with a "STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION" error. 

I tried to remedy the problem by hard resetting my PC and clear my OS drive yet the problem still persisted.

Here are the other things I've tried so far with no luck in fixing it:

•  Turning off XMP
•  Undervolting my CPU to 1.5v
•  Disabling a few P-Cores
•  Doing a MemTest (it all said passed)
•  Updating my BIOS

I mainly use my PC for working on Adobe Illustrator, playing GBA Emulators and the 3 games I mentioned above. The only apps that doesn't close on its own is Steam and Spotify.

I'm really confused as to what is causing all of this and I've tried scouring the internet for similar problems yet the fixes don't seem to work with my issue.

Specs before upgrade:

• i9-9900k
• Asus ROG Strix Z390-I
• 32 GB Corsair Dominators
• RTX 3090
• Corsair 850W SFX

Specs before upgrade:

• i9-14900k
• Asus ROG Strix Z790-I
• 64 GB Kingston Fury Renegade 6000MHZ
• RTX 3090
• Corsair 850W SFX
   

Edited April 28, 2025 by JamesColin
Added a few more details

[Spakes]

Did you reinstall Windows when you switched platforms?

[Tetras]

Your CPU might be a lemon:

 

[JamesCP5]

8 minutes ago, Spakes said:

Did you reinstall Windows when you switched platforms?

Uhmm no. What I did was purely a mobo/cpu/swap basically.

[JamesCP5]

12 minutes ago, Tetras said:

Your CPU might be a lemon:

 

I haven't had any BSOD thankfully.

 

So is the best course of action an RMA?

[Tetras]

1 minute ago, JamesColin said:

So is the best course of action an RMA?

Put everything back to stock and use one of the Intel profiles that should be available in the recent BIOS (if you haven't already).

 

If the PC is stable after that, you're fine (albeit with a performance hit). If the PC is not stable after that (or is showing more symptoms from the list) I'd get it sent back.

[JamesCP5]

1 minute ago, Tetras said:

Put everything back to stock and use one of the Intel profiles that should be available in the recent BIOS (if you haven't already).

 

If the PC is stable after that, you're fine (albeit with a performance hit). If the PC is not stable after that (or is showing more symptoms from the list) I'd get it sent back.

Will give this a shot right now. 

 

Intel Default Settings has Performance and Extreme and Im trying the extreme option

[JamesCP5]

20 minutes ago, Tetras said:

Put everything back to stock and use one of the Intel profiles that should be available in the recent BIOS (if you haven't already).

 

If the PC is stable after that, you're fine (albeit with a performance hit). If the PC is not stable after that (or is showing more symptoms from the list) I'd get it sent back.

No luck. Some games still randomly close. I also ran it while checking Event Viewer and there isn't an error log relevant to the crash.

[Ha-Satan]

23 minutes ago, JamesColin said:

I haven't had any BSOD thankfully.

 

So is the best course of action an RMA?

If the issues persist after trying what Tetras suggests, you should reinstall Windows and see if that fixes it before returning it.

 

Installing a new CPU/mobo without reinstalling the OS can lead to phantom problems that don't immediately show up. I've had that happen to me multiple times.

[JamesCP5]

Just now, Ha-Satan said:

If the issues persist after trying what Tetras suggests, you should reinstall Windows and see if that fixes it before returning it.

 

Installing a new CPU/mobo without reinstalling the OS can lead to phantom problems that don't immediately show up. I've had that happen to me multiple times.

I did what they suggested and the error still happened. I did reinstall the OS but only after the symptoms showed up but the issues still persisted.

[CatTNT]

Your CPU is totally fucked (if this is a CPU issue) because it's an intel 14th gen. Source: Me and my TWO fried 14900K's. 

the ONLY solution to this instability is underclocking your P cores. For me, underclocking the 6Ghz cores to 5.7Ghz works fine enough. It's entirely possible that you might need to underclock even further, maybe putting all P cores at 5.6 Ghz. 

I don't see any point to RMA yet. I have already warrantied my first 14900K after it became unstable, and my new, current 14900K became unstable after about 6 months. This new CPU has only used the patched microcode, that supposedly fixed the issues, turns out it does not. I can RMA my CPU again now, but the next one is just going to fry itself anyway and I'll get the same issue. 

If underclocking your two P cores that turbo to 6Ghz down to 5.7-5.6GHz fixes your crashes, then it is 100% a faulty CPU issue and that is the only fix to it. I have spent dozens of hours and nearly a hundred troubleshooting methods to fix this CPU back the middle of 2024, this was the only solution. 

This should be the only thing you need to do:

[JamesCP5]

9 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

Your CPU is totally fucked (if this is a CPU issue) because it's an intel 14th gen. Source: Me and my TWO fried 14900K's. 

the ONLY solution to this instability is underclocking your P cores. For me, underclocking the 6Ghz cores to 5.7Ghz works fine enough. It's entirely possible that you might need to underclock even further, maybe putting all P cores at 5.6 Ghz. 

I don't see any point to RMA yet. I have already warrantied my first 14900K after it became unstable, and my new, current 14900K became unstable after about 6 months. This new CPU has only used the patched microcode, that supposedly fixed the issues, turns out it does not. I can RMA my CPU again now, but the next one is just going to fry itself anyway and I'll get the same issue. 

If underclocking your two P cores that turbo to 6Ghz down to 5.7-5.6GHz fixes your crashes, then it is 100% a faulty CPU issue and that is the only fix to it. I have spent dozens of hours and nearly a hundred troubleshooting methods to fix this CPU back the middle of 2024, this was the only solution. 

This should be the only thing you need to do:

Will give this one a go. Would underclocking all P-Cores be a much more safer route? I don't mind sacrificing a little bit of performance just to iron out the issues.

[podkall]

5 minutes ago, JamesCP5 said:

Will give this one a go. Would underclocking all P-Cores be a much more safer route? I don't mind sacrificing a little bit of performance just to iron out the issues.

It's worth trying regardless just to see if it's CPU issue that'd get magically fixed/better by doing this.

[CatTNT]

6 minutes ago, JamesCP5 said:

Will give this one a go. Would underclocking all P-Cores be a much more safer route? I don't mind sacrificing a little bit of performance just to iron out the issues.

I have ran both CPUs while only underclocking the two 6Ghz cores and have not crashed after doing that. Although I don't know if/when it will degrade anymore, so if i experience crashes again, I will know to test a further underclock before checking other things. 

I think if you lower all you P cores to something as low at 5.5-5.4Ghz and it's STILL crashing you can be pretty confident something else is the issue, I have never experimented or ran them under 5.7GHz (maybe 5.6GHz long ago?) and still got crashes, it appears the CPU architecture for 13th and 14th gen just cannot handle going above 5.7GHz without dying eventually. 

[JamesCP5]

3 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

I have ran both CPUs while only underclocking the two 6Ghz cores and have not crashed after doing that. Although I don't know if/when it will degrade anymore, so if i experience crashes again, I will know to test a further underclock before checking other things. 

I think if you lower all you P cores to something as low at 5.5-5.4Ghz and it's STILL crashing you can be pretty confident something else is the issue, I have never experimented or ran them under 5.7GHz (maybe 5.6GHz long ago?) and still got crashes, it appears the CPU architecture for 13th and 14th gen just cannot handle going above 5.7GHz without dying eventually. 

Running it at 5.5GHz for all P-cores right now. I'm currently trying out games at the moment. 

[JamesCP5]

19 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

I have ran both CPUs while only underclocking the two 6Ghz cores and have not crashed after doing that. Although I don't know if/when it will degrade anymore, so if i experience crashes again, I will know to test a further underclock before checking other things. 

I think if you lower all you P cores to something as low at 5.5-5.4Ghz and it's STILL crashing you can be pretty confident something else is the issue, I have never experimented or ran them under 5.7GHz (maybe 5.6GHz long ago?) and still got crashes, it appears the CPU architecture for 13th and 14th gen just cannot handle going above 5.7GHz without dying eventually. 

This really helped a lot. I usually run the Dota 2 minigame for testing this specific issue and I only get to around 4-6 minutes. But now I managed to finish a 15-ish minute run. Is it safe to say that its stable now? 

[JamesCP5]

26 minutes ago, podkall said:

It's worth trying regardless just to see if it's CPU issue that'd get magically fixed/better by doing this.

I tried it and its kinda fixed the blatant issues. Would running this 5.5GHz underclock extend the life of the CPU? At this point I'm basically just hoping I could be worry-free for 1-2 years.

[CatTNT]

5 minutes ago, JamesCP5 said:

I tried it and its kinda fixed the blatant issues. Would running this 5.5GHz underclock extend the life of the CPU? At this point I'm basically just hoping I could be worry-free for 1-2 years.

Literally no idea if the degradation only affects the ability to go above 5.7GHz, or if it will eventually lower the useable speed of the CPU over time. I keep it at 5.7GHz since it doesnt crash at that point, and If it really needs to go down another 100MHz every year or something, so be it. I'll RMA it again when i notice the performance reduction.

As for testing, my gold standard was simply letting it sit overnight and seeing if the PC restarted when I woke up in the morning. If it was still running with no restarts, you can be pretty sure it's 100% stable. Make sure some dumb BS like a windows update doesn't affect this and make you think a perfectly stable setup isn't stable. 

[JamesCP5]

3 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

Literally no idea if the degradation only affects the ability to go above 5.7GHz, or if it will eventually lower the useable speed of the CPU over time. I keep it at 5.7GHz since it doesnt crash at that point, and If it really needs to go down another 100MHz every year or something, so be it. I'll RMA it again when i notice the performance reduction.

As for testing, my gold standard was simply letting it sit overnight and seeing if the PC restarted when I woke up in the morning. If it was still running with no restarts, you can be pretty sure it's 100% stable. Make sure some dumb BS like a windows update doesn't affect this and make you think a perfectly stable setup isn't stable. 

Letting it sit for a few hours is next on my to-do list now. If running on 5.7GHz works for you then maybe running mine on 5.5 would be a more better precaution as I really just want some peace of mind.

Btw, are you enabling XMP on yours?

[CatTNT]

6 minutes ago, JamesCP5 said:

Letting it sit for a few hours is next on my to-do list now. If running on 5.7GHz works for you then maybe running mine on 5.5 would be a more better precaution as I really just want some peace of mind.

Btw, are you enabling XMP on yours?

I'm actually sing AMD EXPO rated RAM, 2x32 DDR5-6000 Cl30, not stable for OC'ing the RAM, but fine at stock. I had originally had a set of 2x16 DDR5-6000 CL30 (exact same speed and timings, just half the size) Intel XMP RAM, never helped with the CPU. 

[JamesCP5]

2 minutes ago, CatTNT said:

I'm actually sing AMD EXPO rated RAM, 2x32 DDR5-6000 Cl30, not stable for OC'ing the RAM, but fine at stock. I had originally had a set of 2x16 DDR5-6000 CL30 (exact same speed and timings, just half the size) Intel XMP RAM, never helped with the CPU. 

Oh I see. Might as well enable my XMP as least I get my money's worth on my RAM.

Thank you so much for the fix you suggested! I'm literally on my browser for an entire hour now after underclocking and never got an error. 

[CatTNT]

7 minutes ago, JamesCP5 said:

Oh I see. Might as well enable my XMP as least I get my money's worth on my RAM.

Thank you so much for the fix you suggested! I'm literally on my browser for an entire hour now after underclocking and never got an error. 

It took me a couple weeks of occasional work, followed by 2-3 solid weeks of daily grinding and testing to figure this out. That was hell.