Hi all, first post and looking for advice. Long post sorry. I’ve tried a few things already and wanted to give that history of ‘tried so far’.
I've just purchased (2 days ago) an entirely new build PC, all new components, and after putting it together it is experiencing a significant incidence of Critical Event 41 BSODs (without the actual BSOD). I’m talking 9 crashes in 6 hours when doing sundry tasks like internet browsing and downloading (BF4 from Origin).
The crashes only seem to happen when it’s under very little load. I haven’t had much chance to game with the PC yet but I ran BF4 for 2 hours without incident.
The symptom is it will lock/freeze for 1 second and then simply reboot. Upon arriving back at windows there is a BSOD report.
Analysing the Event Viewer shows a Critical Event, ID 41.
I downloaded BlueScreenViewer and all of the crashes produced stop code 0x124
I've taken my time to trawl the internet (mostly TH) for this event error and stop code combination and in short there are a large variety of potential issues.
System Specs are:
Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M USB/3
Processor AMD FX8350 Black Edition – Stock Cooler
Memory: Corsair 2x 8GB Vengeance 1866Mhz
Graphics: XFX R9 290(X) DD 4GB
PSU: Corsair CX750 (Builder series)
Storage: Seagate 2TB SSHD
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Now my initial thoughts were it software and drivers causing the issue. So I reinstalled the OS clean and left it idling, without an internet connection, and having only installed the latest WHQL stamped drivers for the graphics card. I went for a dinner break and came back 10 minutes later to a crashed PC. So I suspect it’s hardware.
It has crashed within 20 seconds of loading up first thing in the morning to about a 3 hour period at its maximum. At a crash time of 20 seconds from landing on the desktop I can assume it’s not an overheating problem.
To start to identify if it’s a specific hardware component I tried process of elimination.
First I removed a ram stick and waited for a crash, which duly came. I then swapped in the other stick and again waited and again it crashed. Result is either both sticks faulty or neither.
I upgraded the motherboard BIOS from supplied 1503 to 1810 downloaded from ASUS website. The ROM notes indicated: improved system stability. The system has crashed after the update (roughly1 hour after).
I ran memtest86+ on the first ram stick last night and got 4 passes over 8 hours 14 minutes. No errors. The second ram stick is testing as I’m typing this (at work) and intend to run it till I get home later giving it another 8 hour run.
Assuming there is no fault there either I am thinking the following:
1) Hardcode in the various hardware settings into the BIOs which currently has factory settings. Auto everywhere. I read that its possible some power saving routine in the mobo is dropping a part of the H/W below an operating value and it’s flat lining the PC. I’m willing to give this a go but after a brief look over the wide range of options I’m at a loss what to put in. I suspect just the voltages of the memory and CPU initially? I can force the RAM clock as well and the latency among a ton of other things. Getting the right settings advice here would be very useful.
2) If the BIOS doesn’t work then remove the graphics card and run on the HD3000 chip on the Motherboard and see if there is a crash. If there is no crash at this point I will suspect either a faulty PSU or a faulty GFX card. The question would be which one to RMA first?
Does this sound like a sensible course of action?
Have I missed something obvious?
Could it be something else? Like maybe the SSHD being fishy? Bad mobo?
Thanks for taking the time to read all this. Any constructive advice and feedback is very welcomed.
I've just purchased (2 days ago) an entirely new build PC, all new components, and after putting it together it is experiencing a significant incidence of Critical Event 41 BSODs (without the actual BSOD). I’m talking 9 crashes in 6 hours when doing sundry tasks like internet browsing and downloading (BF4 from Origin).
The crashes only seem to happen when it’s under very little load. I haven’t had much chance to game with the PC yet but I ran BF4 for 2 hours without incident.
The symptom is it will lock/freeze for 1 second and then simply reboot. Upon arriving back at windows there is a BSOD report.
Analysing the Event Viewer shows a Critical Event, ID 41.
I downloaded BlueScreenViewer and all of the crashes produced stop code 0x124
I've taken my time to trawl the internet (mostly TH) for this event error and stop code combination and in short there are a large variety of potential issues.
System Specs are:
Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M USB/3
Processor AMD FX8350 Black Edition – Stock Cooler
Memory: Corsair 2x 8GB Vengeance 1866Mhz
Graphics: XFX R9 290(X) DD 4GB
PSU: Corsair CX750 (Builder series)
Storage: Seagate 2TB SSHD
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Now my initial thoughts were it software and drivers causing the issue. So I reinstalled the OS clean and left it idling, without an internet connection, and having only installed the latest WHQL stamped drivers for the graphics card. I went for a dinner break and came back 10 minutes later to a crashed PC. So I suspect it’s hardware.
It has crashed within 20 seconds of loading up first thing in the morning to about a 3 hour period at its maximum. At a crash time of 20 seconds from landing on the desktop I can assume it’s not an overheating problem.
To start to identify if it’s a specific hardware component I tried process of elimination.
First I removed a ram stick and waited for a crash, which duly came. I then swapped in the other stick and again waited and again it crashed. Result is either both sticks faulty or neither.
I upgraded the motherboard BIOS from supplied 1503 to 1810 downloaded from ASUS website. The ROM notes indicated: improved system stability. The system has crashed after the update (roughly1 hour after).
I ran memtest86+ on the first ram stick last night and got 4 passes over 8 hours 14 minutes. No errors. The second ram stick is testing as I’m typing this (at work) and intend to run it till I get home later giving it another 8 hour run.
Assuming there is no fault there either I am thinking the following:
1) Hardcode in the various hardware settings into the BIOs which currently has factory settings. Auto everywhere. I read that its possible some power saving routine in the mobo is dropping a part of the H/W below an operating value and it’s flat lining the PC. I’m willing to give this a go but after a brief look over the wide range of options I’m at a loss what to put in. I suspect just the voltages of the memory and CPU initially? I can force the RAM clock as well and the latency among a ton of other things. Getting the right settings advice here would be very useful.
2) If the BIOS doesn’t work then remove the graphics card and run on the HD3000 chip on the Motherboard and see if there is a crash. If there is no crash at this point I will suspect either a faulty PSU or a faulty GFX card. The question would be which one to RMA first?
Does this sound like a sensible course of action?
Have I missed something obvious?
Could it be something else? Like maybe the SSHD being fishy? Bad mobo?
Thanks for taking the time to read all this. Any constructive advice and feedback is very welcomed.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram