M.2 overheating, I think?

[Real_Smoky]

Hello everyone! I am at a loss here as I have never seen this issue before.

 

My PC has started bluescreening randomly. Sometimes, it works fine under load and crashes when idling, then it crashes under load. I have a feeling it crashes more often under load, but I can't really say either way.

 

I have run Heaven Benchmark and Superposition Benchmark to test the GPU, also by fully loading the VRAM. I have run Prime95 to rule out an overheating CPU and RAM issues, also by fully utilizing RAM. None of those synthetic tests cause the issue.

 

The current culprit is, as far as I can tell, my M.2 SSD. It is a CT1000MX500SSD4. It has served me well for the past years. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is at 92% health, which in my experience is not ideal, but should still work fine (I have seen SSDs that run just fine at 80% health).

 

The SSD is only 60% full. I don't run my games off of it, I run them from a second SSD. However, the SSD goes from 50 to 70 degrees randomly. According to online specs, the max temp for this SSD should be 70. I have thrown an AliExpress heatsink on it, and most of the time, it runs well under 70, but even with the heatsink on and more fans blowing faster, the SSD still seems to reach 70s and I THINK this is the issue, although I am not sure.

 

Currently, the outside temperature is under 20c, in my room it might be a bit hotter, probably around 25. The CPU and GPU are not overheating, I think. My RAM shouldn't be overheating either. I have had this configuration for the past 6 months approximately, maybe a year.

 

I have run Malwarebytes and apparently all is good.

 

Thanks!

[Poinkachu]

26 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

Hello everyone! I am at a loss here as I have never seen this issue before.

 

My PC has started bluescreening randomly. Sometimes, it works fine under load and crashes when idling, then it crashes under load. I have a feeling it crashes more often under load, but I can't really say either way.

 

I have run Heaven Benchmark and Superposition Benchmark to test the GPU, also by fully loading the VRAM. I have run Prime95 to rule out an overheating CPU and RAM issues, also by fully utilizing RAM. None of those synthetic tests cause the issue.

 

The current culprit is, as far as I can tell, my M.2 SSD. It is a CT1000MX500SSD4. It has served me well for the past years. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is at 92% health, which in my experience is not ideal, but should still work fine (I have seen SSDs that run just fine at 80% health).

 

The SSD is only 60% full. I don't run my games off of it, I run them from a second SSD. However, the SSD goes from 50 to 70 degrees randomly. According to online specs, the max temp for this SSD should be 70. I have thrown an AliExpress heatsink on it, and most of the time, it runs well under 70, but even with the heatsink on and more fans blowing faster, the SSD still seems to reach 70s and I THINK this is the issue, although I am not sure.

 

Currently, the outside temperature is under 20c, in my room it might be a bit hotter, probably around 25. The CPU and GPU are not overheating, I think. My RAM shouldn't be overheating either. I have had this configuration for the past 6 months approximately, maybe a year.

 

I have run Malwarebytes and apparently all is good.

 

Thanks!

Just a wild guess

Part of the OS probably corrupted or in the failing area of the nand.

So whenever something needs to access something that is located there, it crash.

 

Happened once with my Samsung 870 Evo, though in my case my SSD was the game & programs install location instead of the OS, and that my SSD was experiencing rapid degradation. It loses 1-2% of health each day,

But yeah, experienced wonky shit whenever I tried to use games / software that were installed before the rapid degradation started.

 

What made know something was really wrong with the SSD was the extended SMART test in Samsung Magician, it passed quick ones, heck it even passed DiskMark, but on extended one it never succeed, didn't even pass the first 5 minutes IIRC.

 

Maybe someone with more experience will chime in soon.

[podkall]

19 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

I have run Heaven Benchmark and Superposition Benchmark to test the GPU, also by fully loading the VRAM. I have run Prime95 to rule out an overheating CPU and RAM issues, also by fully utilizing RAM. None of those synthetic tests cause the issue.

Do they raise the CPU/GPU temps towards critical numbers though?

 

19 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

The current culprit is, as far as I can tell, my M.2 SSD. It is a CT1000MX500SSD4. It has served me well for the past years. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is at 92% health, which in my experience is not ideal, but should still work fine (I have seen SSDs that run just fine at 80% health).

Health is health, it doesn't mean the disk is bad, could you screenshot the entire SMART info of the SSD from the Crystaldiskinfo app?

 

70C should be fine, there's tests with higher temps: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/crucial-mx500-m-2-1-tb/15.html

 

This SSD should thermal throttle and decrease it's performance to preserve it's actual health ("aka not trying to melt itself down")

 

22 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

The CPU and GPU are not overheating, I think.

https://www.hwinfo.com/

 

23 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

My PC has started bluescreening randomly. Sometimes, it works fine under load and crashes when idling, then it crashes under load. I have a feeling it crashes more often under load, but I can't really say either way.

Let's start with basic things.

 

• When did your PC started randomly bluescreening?
• Is it completely random or is it more likely when doing something specific, gaming, or specific game?
• Since the first bluescreen, and few days before, has there been done any changes? Settings changes, updates, drivers, hardware?

 

 

While you think about these points, another good thing to do when seemingly hit with disk related problems, is updating firmware as sometimes you can have disk with less stable firmware that has more stable version out:

https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd-support

 

[191x7]

1 hour ago, Real_Smoky said:

Hello everyone! I am at a loss here as I have never seen this issue before.

 

My PC has started bluescreening randomly. Sometimes, it works fine under load and crashes when idling, then it crashes under load. I have a feeling it crashes more often under load, but I can't really say either way.

 

I have run Heaven Benchmark and Superposition Benchmark to test the GPU, also by fully loading the VRAM. I have run Prime95 to rule out an overheating CPU and RAM issues, also by fully utilizing RAM. None of those synthetic tests cause the issue.

 

The current culprit is, as far as I can tell, my M.2 SSD. It is a CT1000MX500SSD4. It has served me well for the past years. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is at 92% health, which in my experience is not ideal, but should still work fine (I have seen SSDs that run just fine at 80% health).

 

The SSD is only 60% full. I don't run my games off of it, I run them from a second SSD. However, the SSD goes from 50 to 70 degrees randomly. According to online specs, the max temp for this SSD should be 70. I have thrown an AliExpress heatsink on it, and most of the time, it runs well under 70, but even with the heatsink on and more fans blowing faster, the SSD still seems to reach 70s and I THINK this is the issue, although I am not sure.

 

Currently, the outside temperature is under 20c, in my room it might be a bit hotter, probably around 25. The CPU and GPU are not overheating, I think. My RAM shouldn't be overheating either. I have had this configuration for the past 6 months approximately, maybe a year.

 

I have run Malwarebytes and apparently all is good.

 

Thanks!

Check your CMOS battery voltage and your 3.3V line.

[Bjoolz]

Go to C:\Windows\Minidump and check if you have any minidump files. If you do, go back to the Windows folder and copy the Minidump folder itself to the Downloads folder (You can use the desktop if you don't have OneDrive syncing files). Zip the copied folder and attach it to a post. Please follow the instructions to the letter as Windows doesn't like you messing with files in this location.

[Real_Smoky]

4 hours ago, podkall said:

Do they raise the CPU/GPU temps towards critical numbers though?

They raise them pretty high, but the cooling is good enough to keep them from throttling/crashing. I am pretty sure no game or anything can raise the CPU or GPU temp to where it would crash.
 

Health is health, it doesn't mean the disk is bad, could you screenshot the entire SMART info of the SSD from the Crystaldiskinfo app?
 

 

70C should be fine, there's tests with higher temps: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/crucial-mx500-m-2-1-tb/15.html

 

This SSD should thermal throttle and decrease it's performance to preserve it's actual health ("aka not trying to melt itself down")

 

https://www.hwinfo.com/

 

Let's start with basic things.

 

• When did your PC started randomly bluescreening?
  I have been playing Oblivion RE for a while with Lossless Scaling (with framegen) turned on for a couple days, maybe 10 days, idk really. Enough time has passed with me playing it that I am fairly confident it's not them causing the issue, but then again, I couldn't say for sure.
• Is it completely random or is it more likely when doing something specific, gaming, or specific game?
  It will happen during gaming, but it also happens when the PC is just idling or having Chrome open, or when I write something in word. It will go for hours without crashing, but sometimes crashes 2-3 times in a row within, let's say, 5 to 10 minute marks.
• Since the first bluescreen, and few days before, has there been done any changes? Settings changes, updates, drivers, hardware?
  I have bad experience with Windows Updates messing with stuff, so my updates are turned off for months using Wu10Man. No real driver updates or new hardware. I did attach a USB drive that might be overheating to my router and I did start downloading stuff to that USB. The USB stick is in the router and my Windows sees it as a network drive. It is kidna like a simple, small NAS. No idea if that might be the issue.

 

 

While you think about these points, another good thing to do when seemingly hit with disk related problems, is updating firmware as sometimes you can have disk with less stable firmware that has more stable version out:

https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd-support

Tried updating the firmware, says the newest one is already there.

 

My replies in red.

1 hour ago, Bjoolz said:

Go to C:\Windows\Minidump and check if you have any minidump files. If you do, go back to the Windows folder and copy the Minidump folder itself to the Downloads folder (You can use the desktop if you don't have OneDrive syncing files). Zip the copied folder and attach it to a post. Please follow the instructions to the letter as Windows doesn't like you messing with files in this location.

Here you go, thanks for the infos.

Minidump.rar

[podkall]

7 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

It will happen during gaming, but it also happens when the PC is just idling or having Chrome open, or when I write something in word. It will go for hours without crashing, but sometimes crashes 2-3 times in a row within, let's say, 5 to 10 minute marks.

Could be RAM issue, since you most likely have more than 1 stick. You could try using one than the other stick individually. And look for any symptoms, most obvious being straight up not booting with one of the RAM sticks.

 

18 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

I have bad experience with Windows Updates messing with stuff, so my updates are turned off for months using Wu10Man. No real driver updates or new hardware. I did attach a USB drive that might be overheating to my router and I did start downloading stuff to that USB. The USB stick is in the router and my Windows sees it as a network drive. It is kidna like a simple, small NAS. No idea if that might be the issue.

You could try some scans for corrupted files. These can take a while to complete though.

[Real_Smoky]

8 minutes ago, podkall said:

Could be RAM issue, since you most likely have more than 1 stick. You could try using one than the other stick individually. And look for any symptoms, most obvious being straight up not booting with one of the RAM sticks.

 

You could try some scans for corrupted files. These can take a while to complete though.

I doubt that it is a RAM issue as I have run Prime95 and it loads up pretty much 95% of the available RAM. If there were any issues with that, it would, in my experience, crash very quickly. I also ran the built-in Windows memory test, albeit only the short one. Still, it could be RAM related, but I have yet to find more reasons to think it is.

Any scan for corrupted files you could recommend?

[podkall]

11 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

I doubt that it is a RAM issue as I have run Prime95 and it loads up pretty much 95% of the available RAM. If there were any issues with that, it would, in my experience, crash very quickly. I also ran the built-in Windows memory test, albeit only the short one. Still, it could be RAM related, but I have yet to find more reasons to think it is.

Any scan for corrupted files you could recommend?

Prime95 doesn't have to load RAM enough. Prime95 mainly loads both CPU and GPU.

 

17 minutes ago, Real_Smoky said:

Any scan for corrupted files you could recommend?

sfc /scannow

 

CMD command

[Bjoolz]

4 hours ago, Real_Smoky said:

My replies in red.

Here you go, thanks for the infos.

Minidump.rar 704.6 kB · 0 downloads

It looks like memory from the dump files. Memory doesn't have to mean RAM, but it's usually the main suspect. Windows puts low priority data from RAM into the page file and loads it back in when needed so storage can look like memory (And memory can look like storage). The memory controller is in the CPU and if this fails it will just look like memory.

 

When it's storage about half of the dumps will usually blame storage or storage drivers, which I don't see here, so it's likely not storage.

 

If anything is overclocked or undervolted, remove it.

 

 

To test the RAM, use the machine normally with one stick at a time. If just one of the sticks cause crashes, faulty stick. If it crashes with either stick it's probably the CPU. Memory testers miss faulty RAM fairly often with DDR4 and newer so I don't trust them. Because you have four sticks you can just run it with two sticks at a time instead. Use the second and fourth slot when counting from the CPU.

 

I noticed that you are using four RAM sticks. Has it been running with four sticks for a while or did you recently upgrade? If it was a compatibility issue, it would be apparent within a months so if you have been using it for longer than that, it's likely not a compatibility issue. 

8 hours ago, Real_Smoky said:

The current culprit is, as far as I can tell, my M.2 SSD. It is a CT1000MX500SSD4. It has served me well for the past years. According to CrystalDiskInfo, it is at 92% health, which in my experience is not ideal, but should still work fine (I have seen SSDs that run just fine at 80% health).

The health percentage isn't related to the current health of drive, it's related to the wear metrics. Mostly the remaining warrantied writes. The general health status can't be trusted either because it's up to the manufacturer how much the drive has to fail before the status changes and most of them are scumbags. You have to know how to read the parameters in the bottom half of CDI and know which ones are important. If you need help reading this, screenshot CDI and make sure you fit all the parameters into the window.

 

Unless it's an NVMe SSD, for those they nerfed the self diagnostic CDI reads into the ground to where it's completely useless (The CT1000MX500SSD4 is SATA, just general info).