Question At wit's end. Faulty memory or faulty motherboard?

[jailhousews]

New pc build:

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GA
OS drive: Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 Model F4-3200C16D-16GVGB
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
GPU: XFX RX 590 Fatboy
MB: Asrock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4
DVD drive and HDD that I saved from my old PC also.
Windows 10 Pro 64bit


I've been mostly having random program crashes showing event ID 1000, seems like the faulting module can be pretty much anything. Whatever driver was in use by the program that I was using at that particular time. I've also had some BSOD stating access violations mostly or sometimes kernel, just random different things. The BSOD more frequently most recently. I've tried various versions of graphics driver, I've tried switching between 1 or 2 sticks of RAM, in different slots, I've tried messing with the RAM settings in BIOS. I haven't tried an older version of chipset drivers though.

It doesn't want to boot if I set the RAM to 3200, except when I use to XMP profile to do so. Regardless, no matter what speed I use (even default of 2133) the stystem still isn't stable. But, any time I've run memtest it's come out clean, no errors at all. Whether it's the RAM or the MB itself causing memory issues, shouldn't I see errors on memtest either way?

The only time it seemed stable was when I had both graphics and chipset drivers intalled via the .exe installers (the software was installed as well) rather than using device manager to manually install them, but then my computer was performing significantly worse according to benchmarks, and just very unresponsive with several seconds before any program would think about launching. The biggest performance drop at that point was with my NVME drive with 3x less speeds. If I would boot into safe mode it would speed right back up, but then become unstable with crashes again.

I've restarted with clean install of Windows several times, and once or twice I would get a BSOD during installation process.

 

[jailhousews]

Update

Thought I had figured something out. It seemed that when I removed the NVME SSD and installed windows to the HDD that all app and system crashes stopped. Put NVME back in, but booted Windows on HDD. More apps crashing and BSOD. AHA, I thought, the NVME is bad. Was about to buy a new drive, but after a while I did get the very occasional issue still even with just HDD installed. So now I'm thinking, either it's the motherboard or the PSU maybe? I made sure to not use the SATA ports that share PCI lanes with the "M.2 Ultra" slot on this MB per the manual. I had tried the regular M.2 slot which didn't solve the issues. So it's like the MB is faulty in a way that makes it not be able to handle that much PCI traffic, which is why it happens more when a fast NVME drive is installed? It was an open box on Ebay which makes me lean more toward MB being the problem.

About to buy a new MB but I'm hesitant to do so unless I know for sure that it will solve this.

 

[jailhousews]

Does anyone have an opinion on this?

CPU was used/open box (forget which), and video card was used. However I used the video card in my older system before all the parts for my new build came in without issues. Memtest claims my RAM is fine. I don't think CPU failing would cause so random/intermittent/inconsistent issues.

 

[Jeckylll]

Hey, I've been having random issues which are almost similar as yours but I've never encountered amy bsod, it just reboot or program crashes. Did you find any fix ? But yeah my last guess is motherboard since i was having this error months ago but 2 days ago it works normally and now. I'm having the same problems again. If you never encountered any random reboot then as far as i know it's not psu.

 

[jailhousews]

Hey, I've been having random issues which are almost similar as yours but I've never encountered amy bsod, it just reboot or program crashes. Did you find any fix ? But yeah my last guess is motherboard since i was having this error months ago but 2 days ago it works normally and now. I'm having the same problems again. If you never encountered any random reboot then as far as i know it's not psu.

Still don't know for sure, but I went ahead and ordered a replacement motherboard, and plan to use ebay return policy to get refund for the current one. New one is MSI B550-A Pro (Brand NEW) for the same price I originally got the Asrock one with 450 chipset.... so even if it's not the MB really, still a win for newer chipset, better future upgradeability.

So here's where it gets even more confusing. Yesterday I connected my old PSU, which I thought was still operating fine in my old PC other than the fan in it had died (I just pushed air through it with an external fan). Then I tried the NVME drive again, BSOD soon as I sign in to Windows. Reboot, BSOD soon as I reach Windows loading screen. Switched back to new PSU, and changed the power cable to outlet out for one that had never been used. All the power connectors to the board/GPU were reseating during this process, of course.

.... And I've been running PC over 24 hrs now with no BSOD, and the only app crash errors have been a few Windows update, Windows store related to .net framework, and Xbox (beta) app. No other programs crashed so far. I would need to keep using it more to feel sure but it seems to possibly have stopped.

I used a multimeter to check the old PSU after and yeah, a few of the voltage readings were pretty far off. Thought maybe the outside power cable had been bad. Switched back to the old cable, didn't make a difference still not seeing all the random crashes.

If the issue never reoccurs I'll have to assume I just never got the 24-pin connector 100% secure or something until now I guess. That would be strange though considering one of the first things I tried when it started acting up was to reseat all power connectors.

 

[Jeckylll]

Still don't know for sure, but I went ahead and ordered a replacement motherboard, and plan to use ebay return policy to get refund for the current one. New one is MSI B550-A Pro (Brand NEW) for the same price I originally got the Asrock one with 450 chipset.... so even if it's not the MB really, still a win for newer chipset, better future upgradeability.

So here's where it gets even more confusing. Yesterday I connected my old PSU, which I thought was still operating fine in my old PC other than the fan in it had died (I just pushed air through it with an external fan). Then I tried the NVME drive again, BSOD soon as I sign in to Windows. Reboot, BSOD soon as I reach Windows loading screen. Switched back to new PSU, and changed the power cable to outlet out for one that had never been used. All the power connectors to the board/GPU were reseating during this process, of course.

.... And I've been running PC over 24 hrs now with no BSOD, and the only app crash errors have been a few Windows update, Windows store related to .net framework, and Xbox (beta) app. No other programs crashed so far. I would need to keep using it more to feel sure but it seems to possibly have stopped.

I used a multimeter to check the old PSU after and yeah, a few of the voltage readings were pretty far off. Thought maybe the outside power cable had been bad. Switched back to the old cable, didn't make a difference still not seeing all the random crashes.

If the issue never reoccurs I'll have to assume I just never got the 24-pin connector 100% secure or something until now I guess. That would be strange though considering one of the first things I tried when it started acting up was to reseat all power connectors.

Funny since I'm also using asrock 450m steel legend right now, but is till not sure if it's really my motherbo. I also already swapped my psu with better and bigger wattage, the problems still there. But so far no bsod. Just crashes, even steam cause my pc to crashes.