Yet Another BSOD

[heldelance]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently experiencing some issues with my computer, specifically, BSODs. They've never happened before, it's only been in the last few weeks that they have happened.

They don't happen often but it happens when I'm playing games, these aren't newly installed games, I've played them for over a year with no issue.

I'm not sure if this is related but I'll throw it in there anyway. Prior to a Win 7 update late last year (maybe around Sept, Oct) my screen would black out (mostly in games but sometimes out of them) and it would say something about a fatal error, NVIDIA driver has crashed and successfully been restarted. I've always had the latest drivers for it. After the Win 7 update, it's mostly eliminated the problem, I very rarely get the crash now (even when playing GPU intensive games).

My hardware is as follows

AMD Phenom II X4 955
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
Gigabyte GTX570 OC (factory OC)
Corsair HX650W
12 gigs of ram (Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4X1600C9 2 x 4gb + G.Skill Ripjaws F3-10666CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2gb)

I'll probably yank the G.Skills (I couldn't put all 4 Corsair sticks, CPU heatsink prevents me) because I believe they may be the issue, would it be fine to keep the first 2 ram slots empty?

I'll post the BSOD log file when I get home tonight + screenies of my hardware from CPU-Z

 

[hedwar2011]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently experiencing some issues with my computer, specifically, BSODs. They've never happened before, it's only been in the last few weeks that they have happened.

They don't happen often but it happens when I'm playing games, these aren't newly installed games, I've played them for over a year with no issue.

I'm not sure if this is related but I'll throw it in there anyway. Prior to a Win 7 update late last year (maybe around Sept, Oct) my screen would black out (mostly in games but sometimes out of them) and it would say something about a fatal error, NVIDIA driver has crashed and successfully been restarted. I've always had the latest drivers for it. After the Win 7 update, it's mostly eliminated the problem, I very rarely get the crash now (even when playing GPU intensive games).

My hardware is as follows

AMD Phenom II X4 955
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
Gigabyte GTX570 OC (factory OC)
Corsair HX650W
12 gigs of ram (Corsair Vengeance CMZ16GX3M4X1600C9 2 x 4gb + G.Skill Ripjaws F3-10666CL9D-4GBRL 2 x 2gb)

I'll probably yank the G.Skills (I couldn't put all 4 Corsair sticks, CPU heatsink prevents me) because I believe they may be the issue, would it be fine to keep the first 2 ram slots empty?

I'll post the BSOD log file when I get home tonight + screenies of my hardware from CPU-Z

Download and run GPU-Z, found HERE , and see what your GPU temps are registering at. You can also try benchmarking the computer using any of the popular programs and see if it causes the errors. It really sounds like something is going fishy with your GPU so I would start there.

 

[heldelance]

I've done some monitoring and tried playing even when it was 38-40C here. The GPU hits about 78C at load (was playng BF3 at full settings) but it never once karked it. In fact, ever since the Windows update late last year, it's pretty much stopped.

Before the update, it didn't matter about the temps. It would sometimes even happen at 50C.

 

[hedwar2011]

I've done some monitoring and tried playing even when it was 38-40C here. The GPU hits about 78C at load (was playng BF3 at full settings) but it never once karked it. In fact, ever since the Windows update late last year, it's pretty much stopped.

Before the update, it didn't matter about the temps. It would sometimes even happen at 50C.

I would recommend creating a Hirens Boot CD and utilize some of the options available such as memtest86+ and run it for several hours and see if it hiccups. Very, very strange indeed.

 

[heldelance]

Best answer selected by heldelance.

 

[heldelance]

I think I might have found what's causing it. The Razer Synapse program just did an update, silly me just hit 'ok' without fully reading the notes. It mentioned something about fixing BSOD issues but I can't for the life of me, find the relevant update notes online!

Gonna see if this solves it, also gonna try removing all Razer drivers and reverting to whatever Windows puts on if the BSODs keep happening.

Thanks for the link hedwar2011, it's bloody helpful and I was at least able to check that my HDDs were still fine.

 

[hedwar2011]

I think I might have found what's causing it. The Razer Synapse program just did an update, silly me just hit 'ok' without fully reading the notes. It mentioned something about fixing BSOD issues but I can't for the life of me, find the relevant update notes online!

Gonna see if this solves it, also gonna try removing all Razer drivers and reverting to whatever Windows puts on if the BSODs keep happening.

Thanks for the link hedwar2011, it's bloody helpful and I was at least able to check that my HDDs were still fine.

No problem at all. Good to hear that it helped you out!