BSOD after upgrading CPU to Q9650

[trungds]

Hi,

I have recently upgraded my CPU from E8400 to Q9650. The old E8400 was working perfectly, however, BSOD usually happened after installing the new Q9650.

I've been searching for solutions in many articles and forums from Internet, then tried repairing my OS, performing a clean installation of Windows, updating BIOS, re-installing the CPU, etc... but the issue still happened.

I checked the dump files and noticed that the causes of BSOD were different each time:
- SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED ntoskrnl.exe
- SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED Ntfs.sys
- DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL ntoskrnl.exe
- DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL nvlddmkm.sys

My system specs:
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.00GHz
- RAM: 8GB DDR2 800MHz
- Mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP43-S3L
- VGA: Asus GTX 950 2GB
- OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

What should I do now to fix the BSOD issue? Any help is really appreciated.

 

[Tradesman1]

What BIOS version, would get latest... what PSU?

 

[trungds]

What BIOS version, would get latest... what PSU?

BIOS version F9c, which is the latest one.
PSU Jupistar 500W.

 

[akseli]

Do you have 4x2 GB chips, all same model? Quad cores stress the memory more.

Can you try better power supply, that model seems rather weak, only 15A on 12V line? In what situations these BSODs happen.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the PSU is far too weak for that GPU and CPU combo.

 

[trungds]

Do you have 4x2 GB chips, all same model? Quad cores stress the memory more.

Can you try better power supply, that model seems rather weak, only 15A on 12V line? In what situations these BSODs happen.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the PSU is far too weak for that GPU and CPU combo.

Yes, I have 4x2GB DDR2 which are all the same model, but they are pretty old and come from an unpopular brand: EKMemory.

Those BSODs happened in general situations: watching video with VLC player, surfing Facebook with Chrome, downloading a torrent with uTorrent,... and one time it happened right after I logged on to Windows.

Probably the cause comes from PSU as you said, but I'm not really sure since specs said that the Q9650 just consumes 30W more than the E8400 (95W vs 65W).

 

[trungds]

Do you have 4x2 GB chips, all same model? Quad cores stress the memory more.

Can you try better power supply, that model seems rather weak, only 15A on 12V line? In what situations these BSODs happen.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the PSU is far too weak for that GPU and CPU combo.

I replaced a stronger PSU, but BSOD still happened. Then finally I figured out the problem was related to my RAMs after testing them with MemTest86. 2/4 sticks did not work properly. So I replaced them with the new ones, and now BSOD is no longer happen