Unstable POST, constant BSODs.

[yorgetsuten]

A few days ago i've built a system to use as a secondary machine in case my main one fails, some homelabbing, and occasional gaming. The specs are:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z590i Vision D
CPU: Intel Core i5-11400
GPU: MSI RTX 4060 VENTUS 2X
RAM: PATRIOT Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200MT/s CL16
PSU: Thermalright TR-TGFX850 550w

Almost all of the components are used, with the exception of the power supply, fans, and CPU cooler. At the moment I'm also using an SSD from my old system with Windows 10 installed to see if it works.

At first it even did, kinda. After the assembly of the system i didn't have any kind of video output for a good 15 minutes, but after a reboot it booted the windows successfully. When I updated the graphics card driver via the NVIDIA app and tried testing the system with The Witcher 3, the system froze completely after about 5 minutes. After rebooting, I was greeted by the BIOS with a message about a boot problem or something, and in Windows, I got several blue screens with errors about attempting to write to read-only memory, and a few others I don’t remember. So I spent the next few hours updating the BIOS and trying to get Windows to start. I don’t remember exactly how, but it worked, and since I figured it was some kind of gpu driver issue, I uninstalled it using DDU, and everything seemed fine - I even managed to play for about three hours without any issues. When I updated the graphics card driver again through the NVIDIA app, the system crashed almost immediately with a BSOD, so I uninstalled it again using DDU and thought that was the end of it.

The next day, I successfully booted up the system on the first try, no problems at all, but after i moved the system from the table to the floor - it seemed to reload and was stuck on the BIOS splash screen, i figure power cable probably came loose or something. since then it's a complete mess - most of the times i press the power button the rgb is there, fans are spinning, all that, but i don't see any image at all, like it wouldn't POST, and sometimes fans are spinning but rgb is not there, sometimes i power it off and rgb is still there until i plug it out of the wall, so i would reload a few times just to get to the splash screen, sometimes having to short the CLR_CMOS pins to do so. when it does eventually POST, sometimes it wold even successfully boot windows - but it eventually BSODs with all kinds of errors, sometimes after like a minute, sometimes after an hour. I figured the problem was a corrupted system, drivers, or both, so I tried reinstalling it - but it turned out there were essentially two Windows systems on the same drive, and at startup I had to choose one of them. The one I selected seemed to be the new one, the Windows Setup wizard was displayed on the screen, but during the process another BSOD happened with “Page Fault in Nonpaged Area” error.

My next step would be to live boot arch linux to wipe the drive clean and try installing windows there again, but i'm really confused as to what's going on and I’d appreciate any insight into what’s wrong with my machine.

[Dutch_Master]

Your PSU is only 550W? That's a bit low, but you also have an 11th gen Intel CPU that might be the culprit as those have confirmed irreversible severe degradation under certain conditions. If you got that CPU used, try claiming your money back, as it's likely the reason it was sold in the first place

[xAcid9]

1 hour ago, Dutch_Master said:

Your PSU is only 550W? That's a bit low

That's more than enough for his configuration.

1 hour ago, Dutch_Master said:

but you also have an 11th gen Intel CPU that might be the culprit as those have confirmed irreversible severe degradation under certain conditions.

No that affect 13th and 14th gen K series. 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, yorgetsuten said:

I’d appreciate any insight into what’s wrong with my machine.

Can you upload the dump files? Usually located at C:\Windows\minidump\ or C:\Windows\memory.dmp

 

2 hours ago, yorgetsuten said:

but during the process another BSOD happened with “Page Fault in Nonpaged Area” error.

Usually RAM related, sometime storage. Try run Memtest

[leclod]

At some point you could maybe give it a go without the gpu, with the igpu

And as @xAcid9 stated Memtest86 (or faster Testmem5)

Edited March 15 by leclod

[Bjoolz]

53 minutes ago, leclod said:

And as @xAcid9 stated Memtest86 (or faster Testmem5)

You don't want to use memory testers that run in Windows. It can't test memory already in use and in Windows you have a lot more RAM in use than when in a bootable tool. 

 

@yorgetsuten As already stated this is likely a memory issue. Memory doesn't have to mean RAM, but it's usually the main suspect. If you have any dump files it could be helpful if you could upload them. Go to C:\Windows\Minidump (Sometimes Minidumps for some reason) 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.

[leclod]

15 hours ago, Bjoolz said:

You don't want

But I do 

Edited March 16 by leclod

[yorgetsuten]

On 3/15/2026 at 5:43 PM, xAcid9 said:

Try run Memtest

 

On 3/15/2026 at 7:17 PM, Bjoolz said:

this is likely a memory issue.

hi you all, thanks for replies. so i did wipe the drive clean serving the files i didn't want to lose over http to my other machine for a few hours without any issues, then tried to reinstall windows and it bsoded on account creation stage. freaked out, booted memtest86, and it crashed 4 minutes in. freaked out, reassembled the system, cleaned the dimm slots just in case, and after these manipulations memtest completed without any errors. I proceeded with the windows install, no issues there, and since then i've using the system intensively for a few days, all without a single issue. but yesterday, 40 minutes into the witcher 3, the system froze. reboot, another 40 minutes, it froze again but this time video output was gone too. i figured it's gpu overheating since its temps weren't all that good when i checked them, so i repasted it, and then it's been running for 4 hours without issues again, hot spot averaging at 60 degrees with max at 79. It still worries me though, even if replacing the thermal paste and pads lowered the temperature by 10 degrees, the gpu failing at 90 degrees at hot spot doesn't sound good. there's only one dump file, with an error of PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, probably from ntoskrnl.exe (it's red in bluescreenview)

aand just now it happened a few more times, no dump files.

[Bjoolz]

6 hours ago, yorgetsuten said:

there's only one dump file, with an error of PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, probably from ntoskrnl.exe (it's red in bluescreenview)

Ntoskrnl.exe is the kernel. It's always present so when you see this you are either using a bad tool looking in the wrong place. Bluescreenview is a bad tool. You would want to use WinDbg (Free from the Microsoft Store, made by Microsoft), but with these being memory errors they are a bit more complicated to read than other crashes.