- Jan 25, 2012
- 3
- 0
- 18,510
I guess I'll start by listing my specs since that always seems to help somewhat, it's a build I made for myself sometime around last July, meant solely for gaming.
CPU: i5 2500k with Hyper 212+,
GPU: XFX HD RADEON 6950 2GB,
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance,
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 PRO Rev 3.0,
HDD: 2 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB (5,200 rpm), 1 x Western Digital 320 GB (can't remember the exact model, but it's 7,200 rpm)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 775W.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
The problem I've been having isn't new, it's been there since I first assembled the PC, but I've only just got around to trying to fix/replace whatever's faulty (I'm a chronic procrastinator
). Now then, the problem I'm having is that my computer BSODs whenever multiple cores are enabled, when I first powered it up I tried to install W7 and got a BSOD halfway through installation, I re-attempted to install it several times, each time getting something like "Irrecoverable hardware error" but sometimes "Secondary core didn't respond to a multi-core instruction in time", I can't remember exactly what they said nor the error codes the threw at me, I'll reproduce them in a minute and update.
The error about multi-core timing gave me the idea to enable only one core in BIOS, lo and behold it worked, W7 installed fine and I haven't had a BSOD since (unless you count when I tripped and launched my external HDD across the room while USBSTOR.sys decided to destroy itself). The lack of multiple cores hasn't really bothered me much, it still runs all games on max with at least 30fps (I guess that pretty much disproves everyone who says you "absolutely need" multi-core for gaming
) but it's obviously not as good as having all four cores so I [EDIT] considered RMA'ing the CPU [/EDIT], rebooted earlier today and enabled all four cores to double-check it still BSODs, now this is where it gets weird. It actually managed to boot into windows, I loaded up task manager and noticed that all four cores were being used by various things, though it BSOD'd after about 4 minutes of up-time. After rebooting again I ran Prime95, the temps were normal: 30 or so for idle, got up to ~55 before BSODing again... at roughly 4 minutes up-time again. Rebooting again, I tried setting the CPU to power saving in ASUS EZ mode, then high performance, these settings lasted 6 minutes and 2 minutes respectively, torture-testing didn't affect it at all. Neither did enabling two or three cores.
So in all I have a computer that BSODs whenever multiple cores are enabled, neither the number of active cores (provided it's more than one) or CPU usage affect the time taken to BSOD, but clock speed does. SOMETHING is busted, I'm guessing CPU or motherboard, but I'm not sure and don't wannna RMA something that works perfectly fine, what do you guys think?
P.S. I don't have a spare 1155 CPU or motherboard so I can't just test it the easy way
Also sorry for the long post, but I've never seen anything like this before, can't find any instances of it happening to anyone else so figured I'd go into as much detail as possible.
CPU: i5 2500k with Hyper 212+,
GPU: XFX HD RADEON 6950 2GB,
RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance,
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 PRO Rev 3.0,
HDD: 2 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB (5,200 rpm), 1 x Western Digital 320 GB (can't remember the exact model, but it's 7,200 rpm)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 775W.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
The problem I've been having isn't new, it's been there since I first assembled the PC, but I've only just got around to trying to fix/replace whatever's faulty (I'm a chronic procrastinator
). Now then, the problem I'm having is that my computer BSODs whenever multiple cores are enabled, when I first powered it up I tried to install W7 and got a BSOD halfway through installation, I re-attempted to install it several times, each time getting something like "Irrecoverable hardware error" but sometimes "Secondary core didn't respond to a multi-core instruction in time", I can't remember exactly what they said nor the error codes the threw at me, I'll reproduce them in a minute and update. The error about multi-core timing gave me the idea to enable only one core in BIOS, lo and behold it worked, W7 installed fine and I haven't had a BSOD since (unless you count when I tripped and launched my external HDD across the room while USBSTOR.sys decided to destroy itself). The lack of multiple cores hasn't really bothered me much, it still runs all games on max with at least 30fps (I guess that pretty much disproves everyone who says you "absolutely need" multi-core for gaming
) but it's obviously not as good as having all four cores so I [EDIT] considered RMA'ing the CPU [/EDIT], rebooted earlier today and enabled all four cores to double-check it still BSODs, now this is where it gets weird. It actually managed to boot into windows, I loaded up task manager and noticed that all four cores were being used by various things, though it BSOD'd after about 4 minutes of up-time. After rebooting again I ran Prime95, the temps were normal: 30 or so for idle, got up to ~55 before BSODing again... at roughly 4 minutes up-time again. Rebooting again, I tried setting the CPU to power saving in ASUS EZ mode, then high performance, these settings lasted 6 minutes and 2 minutes respectively, torture-testing didn't affect it at all. Neither did enabling two or three cores.So in all I have a computer that BSODs whenever multiple cores are enabled, neither the number of active cores (provided it's more than one) or CPU usage affect the time taken to BSOD, but clock speed does. SOMETHING is busted, I'm guessing CPU or motherboard, but I'm not sure and don't wannna RMA something that works perfectly fine, what do you guys think?
P.S. I don't have a spare 1155 CPU or motherboard so I can't just test it the easy way
Also sorry for the long post, but I've never seen anything like this before, can't find any instances of it happening to anyone else so figured I'd go into as much detail as possible.
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