Computer freezes during boot, need help deciphering machine check exceptions

Poncho · May 16, 2017

Running arch linux, specs are as follows:

i5-6500
8GB HyperX Fury RAM
MSI Z170A PC MATE motherboard
Gigabyte HD 7950
500W Seasonic 80+ bronze PSU.

Woke up today to a non-responsive computer, rebooting yielded (I only got this error once) this:

[       0.214191] mce: [Hardware Error]: CPU 1: Machine Check: 0 Bank 1: ff80000000000184
[       0.214194] mce: [Hardware Error]: TSC 0 ADDR 10008d540 MISC 86
[       0.214196] mce: [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:506e3 TIME 1494931738 SOCKET 0 APIC 2 microcode 73

I no longer get any errors, I simply get to some point in the boot process (most often to the checklist, but once I even got to the tty login prompt) and then the computer freezes. No black screen, no restart, just hangs.

This occurs regardless if CPU is overclocked or not.

BIOS screen works fine, as does grub.

Running the errors above through mcelog yields:

Hardware event. This is not a software error.
CPU 1 BANK 0 
TIME 1494931738 Tue May 16 13:48:58 2017
MCG status:
MCi status:
Machine check not valid
Corrected error
MCA: No Error
STATUS 0 MCGSTATUS 0
CPUID Vendor Intel Family 6 Model 94
(Fields were incomplete)
SOCKET 0 APIC 2 microcode 73

This still doesn't make much sense to me.

The only thing that I suspect is the PSU, since it's like 5 years old now. I've got no way to check though, I'd have to buy a new one.

If anyone had any thoughts about this, I'd really appreciate the help!