Question I have been experiencing numerous BSODs throughout the past week and a half!

[DoctorPebble]

Hey everyone. Any help here would be sincerely appreciated as I feel lost about what to do. As the title suggests, I have had roughly 7 BSODs throughout the past week and a half. I have the minidump files for three of them.

For context, I upgraded my PC on December 5th. My PC before had gone over a year without a single BSOD. However, a few days after the upgrade, I began having BSODs randomly when I am actively doing something. I left the PC on for three days without any BSODs, so these BSODs are only happening when I am actively doing something besides playing a game (I play very demanding games, so it would have BSOD if there was an issue on game stability).

The components I replaced after the upgrade were the following:
Motherboard
CPU
PSU
CPU Cooler, new case fans, and PC case

The first three are likely the relevant ones for BSOD discussion, especially since the majority of the BSODs related to MEMORY_MANAGEMENT. I have uploaded my minidump files to a google drive if anyone could kindly see if you could find out the culprit better than I can. I ran the minidumps through Windbg, but it's not really helping.

Another important thing is that I did an entire fresh install of Windows 10 today as I am writing this post. All my drivers are up-to-date, and I am still having the same errors I did before.

I am physically limited in what I can do due to muscle weakness from a condition, so I would like to know if I should absolutely start doing stuff like Memtest, which would require me to have someone help me take off the CPU cooler to do so and begin testing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/157pHzs5KxYo7_NtGJpLvuXB2z4Ao-cOx/view?usp=drive_link

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, and I'll be sure to check for responses often.

Edit: I should also say that my GPU is a year old and has been working perfectly on the old system. However, my RAM is roughly 4 years old now and on XMP 3200 Mhz (Like it always had been on the old system). I'm a little suspicious of the RAM, but I want to know if maybe there is something else wrong.

Additional information I should have included:

PC Specifications -
RAM - 4 x 8 Corsair Vengeance 3200Mhz (4 - 5 years old now)
CPU - Ryzen 7 5700X 8 - Core Processors 3.4 GHz (New)
GPU - MSI RTX 3060 12GB (Roughly 6 months old)
MOBO - MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (New)
PSU - Corsair RM850x Fully Modular ATX Power Supply 80 PLUS Gold (New)
Storage Devices -
NVMe Samsung 970 EVO 500GB (C: drive) (400 GB free of 465 GB)
Samsung 2.5 inch SSD 2TB (521 GB free of 1.81 TB) (1 year old)
Western Digital 2.5 inch SSD 1TB (298 GB free of 931 GB)
Western Digital HDD 4TB (1.84 TB free of 3.63 TB)
OS: Windows 10 Home / Version 22H2 / Installed on 12/19/2024 / OS Build 19045.5247

I did a fresh install of Windows 10 today, so I only have a copy of one of the minidumps from before the Windows 10 fresh install. But I am already experiencing the BSODs similar to what I had before, so I'm going under the basis that it's not related to drivers or Windows itself.

View Reliability History -
After looking through this, I unfortunately was not able to find anything related to the BSODs besides the two bugchecks:
Bugcheck #1 - The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001a (0x0000000000041792, 0xffff8500be800068, 0x0000000000000010, 0x0000000000000000)
Bugcheck #2 - The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x0000001a (0x0000000000041790, 0xffffce0014178e70, 0x000000000000011d, 0x000000000000011e)

The third bugcheck can be found in the minidump from December 8th. Everything else in reliability history isn't giving me any useful information. Nothing looks like it's have a cause-effect situation prior to the BSOD.

Event Viewer -
After thoroughly investigating here, I was unfortunately not able to find a specific answer on what it could be. I have scrolled through event viewer a hundreds times it feels like over the past 4 years owning this PC, so I have figured out what is a normal error / warning. The only ones that pop out to me are the bugchecks I put up previously. The rest of the decernable errors are ones that are telling me that windows didn't shut down properly or anything of that nature.

Specs of the old PC vs new PC after hardware upgrades -
Old PC New PC
RAM - 4 x 8 Corsair Vengeance 3200Mhz RAM - 4 x 8 Corsair Vengeance 3200Mhz (Same)
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 3700x CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 5700x (New)
GPU - MSI RTX 3060 12GB GPU - MSI RTX 3060 12GB (Same)
MOBO - MSI B450 Tomahawk Max MOBO - MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (New)
PSU - Thermaltake 700W Bronze PSU - Corsair RM850x ATX 80 PLUS Gold (New)
Storage - Same as listed above Storage - Same as listed above, but C: wiped for fresh install of windows 10 to narrow down whether or not drivers were the issue or Windows itself.

Summary of personal obervations for when the BSODs happened:

BSOD #1 (Before fresh install) - I was going to shut down my PC roughly two to three days after we swapped out the hardware for upgrades. However, when I shut down the PC, about 10 seconds into the shutdown sequence, I get a BSOD.

BSOD #2 (Before fresh install) - I was redownloading a game called Rainbow Six Siege. After it downloaded the files, it began installing it. I went to step away for a minute or two to get something to drink. I came back to my PC having restarted from a BSOD. I redid the download, then it worked the second time.

BSOD #3 (Before fresh install) - I was launching a game called Helldivers 2. Once the anti-cheat menu started loaded, I had a BSOD. I've launched the game a bunch of times since then and had no issue.

Not a BSOD, but a weird occurence (Before fresh install) - When a game called Zenless Zone Zero got a major version update, I installed the update through the launcher. When I launched the game, it had a small 700 MB update. However, I kept on getting weird in-game errors about downloading the update that had nothing to do with the internet connection. I guess it couldn't give me a proper error due to something being wrong with my system?

Not a BSOD, but another weird occurence (Before fresh install) - I had been absolutely loving Marvels Rivals, but I am the only one in my friend group that is having consistent Unreal Engine 5 crashes. With these crashes, I am getting the most generic crash errors not specific to any driver like other people are getting.

BSOD #4 - This is after the fresh install of Windows 10. I had done the entire set up process with no issues, installed the drivers well, installed the basic programs I use such as MSI Afterburner, Steam, Firefox, Discord, etc. However, I wanted to see if with my new fresh install of Windows, I could download that Zenless Zone Zero update I mentioned in the prior section. I started the download in the game's launcher (before that small patch I talked about in the game itself), it downloaded 67GB of files successfully, but when it began verifying the files and updating plugins, my PC got a BSOD.

BSOD #5 - This is only roughly 8 minutes after BSOD #4. I start the download again, it starts trying to verify the files, I tab out to Firefox, everything begins freezing on Firefox alongside everything else, then I BSOD.

At first, you'd think this was an issue with my storage devices. However, I've ran CHKDSK commands to check the health alongside Disk Partition and all of them say my drives are healthy. The different games I've mention are all on the other storage mediums besides my C: drive itself. I could definitely be wrong here though.

With many of the BSODs already being MEMORY_MANAGEMENT errors, it's starting to worry me that maybe the RAM is beginning to go out or its a faulty motherboard. However, as I mentioned earlier in the post, I had this same exact RAM in the old PC and the PC did not BSOD for nearly 2 years.

What is also weirder is that I ran three max stress tests back to back, and I still couldn't get the PC to BSOD after I fresh installed windows. It is only when I begin doing the things I mentioned in the previous BSODs.

All of you are much smarter and experienced than I am when it comes to these issues as I have used Tomshardware for the five years I've been into PC building, so I was hoping that maybe with this information, one of you could maybe have an idea of what this could be based on previous experiences since I'm stumped.

Please let me know if any other information is needed and I'll give you as detailed information as possible.

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage.

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

= = = =

Mini-dumps have their place and value.

However, you may find it a bit more revealing by taking a look at things via Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Reliabiity History is much more end user friendly and the timeline format may reveal patterns. Especially anything being captured just before or at the time of the noted BSODs.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

To help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

Both tools support clicking on specific errors to obtain more details. The details may or may not be helpful.

 

[DoctorPebble]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage.

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

= = = =

Mini-dumps have their place and value.

However, you may find it a bit more revealing by taking a look at things via Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Reliabiity History is much more end user friendly and the timeline format may reveal patterns. Especially anything being captured just before or at the time of the noted BSODs.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

To help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

Both tools support clicking on specific errors to obtain more details. The details may or may not be helpful.

Hi Ralston, I’ll go to my PC now and look at those two areas. Unfortunately, I do check in those areas, and I think I would have found the culprit if it was revealing itself there. However, I’ll go check them again and post picture and get information.

Also, I’ll edit my post to include my PC info in a little bit. Thank you for the quick response!

 

[DoctorPebble]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage.

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

= = = =

Mini-dumps have their place and value.

However, you may find it a bit more revealing by taking a look at things via Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer.

Reliabiity History is much more end user friendly and the timeline format may reveal patterns. Especially anything being captured just before or at the time of the noted BSODs.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

To help:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

Both tools support clicking on specific errors to obtain more details. The details may or may not be helpful.

Hi Ralston, I updated my post to include any information I could think of providing. If you believe I need to add anymore specific information, I will do my best to find it.

For the moment, do you think I should go ahead and try Windows Memory Diagnostic first, then Memtest if WMD detects an error? I saw that was something people done. Like I mentioned in the post, I'm unfortunately not able to physically take apart my PC like I used to due to physical impairments without asking a friend or parent to help me, so I would love reassurance that doing RAM checks would be the best thing to do using the information I provided.

 

[80251]

Just today I was getting the MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSODs today and it turned out it was my memory, which even thought it's rated to 4266, wasn't working at even 3970 Mhz. Yesterday I was having problems w/firefox not even starting.
Test your memory. I would suggest Prime95 w/large FFTs.

 

[DoctorPebble]

Just today I was getting the MEMORY_MANAGEMENT BSODs today and it turned out it was my memory, which even thought it's rated to 4266, wasn't working at even 3970 Mhz. Yesterday I was having problems w/firefox not even starting.
Test your memory. I would suggest Prime95 w/large FFTs.

I'll wait to see what others have to say before I try Prime95 since I don't think this will help my case. Like I mentioned, I've done three stress tests using Heaven, played hardware intensive games, and still didn't get BSODs during those long gaming sessions. These BSODs have only happened when I'm starting up games or downloading games, but it's not the disk since CHKDSK and Disk Management have repeatedly told me that my drives are healthy.

Also, when I brought my RAM speed from 3200 Mhz down to the base factory 2133 Mhz, the issue I was having with that Zenless Zone Zero game I was talking about still kept consistently occurring.

I appreciate you responding to my post though!

 

[Ralston18]

This motherboard?

https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGB550TOMAHAWK.pdf

Verify that I found the applicable User Manual.

Reread and review the entire document along with all documentation for other installed components. Pay close attention to all fine print, warnings, and references to checking for online updates.

= = = =

Some motherboards require that the first physically installed RAM be placed in a specific slot - likely DIMM_A2

According to the linked User Manual that is a requirement for your motherboard.

Reference physically numbered Page 15.

There are also seven other "Important Notes' that must be understood and complied with as applicable.

Double check everything to ensure that all is as it should be or otherwise required.

Details matter.

 

[DoctorPebble]

This motherboard?

https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGB550TOMAHAWK.pdf

Hi Ralston. I went back into the manual and read through the other pages, but read page 15 thoroughly again. After going point by point, I did not see any issues I could be encountering.

For example, my RAM voltage is set at 1.36V when running at 3200 MHz. My RAM is properly seated in the A & C, B & D order.

However, I did just have Windows Memory Diagnostic do a full test and it detected a hardware problem immediately. Here are the results from the test.
If it detected hardware problems that quick, could it be RAM that isn't seated all the way in?

 

[DoctorPebble]

This motherboard?

https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGB550TOMAHAWK.pdf

Verify that I found the applicable User Manual.

Reread and review the entire document along with all documentation for other installed components. Pay close attention to all fine print, warnings, and references to checking for online

Quick update. I went ahead and started memtest86 and decided to just have all four sticks in there just to see if there were any issues immediately. Well, I did end up having errors not even a minute after starting.

I’ll have someone help me with reseating the RAM in a little while. Would anyone know what this error indicates?

 

[geofelt]

What is the make/model of your ram kit?
Is it a single matched kit?
If not matched, it can cause problems.
CPU-Z spd tab will identify the part number installed.
Look at all 4.

You might correct the issue by increasing the ram voltage in the motherboard bios.

 

[DoctorPebble]

What is the make/model of your ram kit?
Is it a single matched kit?
If not matched, it can cause problems.
CPU-Z spd tab will identify the part number installed.
Look at all 4.

You might correct the issue by increasing the ram voltage in the motherboard bios.

I have two sets of 2 x 8 Corsair Vengenace 3200Mhz XMP that have been running together perfectly fine on the old build for nearly three years (I started with only one 2 x 8 set when I started building a PC, then sourced the *exact* same model I bought a year later and it was successful). That’s all I can really tell you about them now since I have the PC on Memtest86 right now trying to narrow down whether it’s a faulty RAM stick, RAM slot, or possibly going down the route of swapping out the CPU.

I’ll update my thread here of my results.

Sorry if seem all over the place with my responses and what I’m choosing to do right now. I am ready to just be done with this. If it tells you anything, I tested the RAM with the factory 2133 MHz config with 1.2V (whatever the default was in the BIOS, I left it), and I tested it with 3200MHz, which it automatically went to 1.36V. I still kept consistently getting the BSODs.

Since that is how I’ve always ran these RAM sticks and they’ve always worked in the old Motherboard/CPU for years, then all of the sudden I’m getting these errors after putting them into a new motherboard and CPU, I’m going to narrow down whether it’s one of the issues above.

So far, with all four RAM slots in the PC, I kept getting thousands of errors. We reseated all RAM sticks, and still consistently got thousands of errors. Now, we’re testing each RAM stick one by one. So far, the first one being tested hasn’t given an error (yet) after nearly 25 minutes, whereas the full RAM set up was giving me errors within the first 10 seconds.

I appreciate you responding to my question!

 

[geofelt]

You do not have a matched set of ram.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
The internal workings are designed for the capacity of the kit.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards, can be very sensitive to this.
This is more difficult when more sticks are involved.
Ram must be matched for proper operation.

Ryzen performance it tightly tied to ram.
Your upgrade may have worked before, but apparently not now.
My best suggestion is to install 2 sticks and explicitly set the settings for speed, and timings that you want, then specify a voltage that is higher
Than the voltage specified on the ram, Perhaps.1v higher in small increments.

Then add the other two sticks and test.

In the (distant) past, I have found the corsair ram guys customer support to be helpful.
You may want to open a support issue with them.

 

[DoctorPebble]

You do not have a matched set of ram.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
A motherboard must manage all the ram using the same specs of voltage, cas and speed.
The internal workings are designed for the capacity of the kit.
Ram from the same vendor and part number can be made up of differing manufacturing components over time.
Some motherboards, can be very sensitive to this.
This is more difficult when more sticks are involved.
Ram must be matched for proper operation.

Ryzen performance it tightly tied to ram.
Your upgrade may have worked before, but apparently not now.
My best suggestion is to install 2 sticks and explicitly set the settings for speed, and timings that you want, then specify a voltage that is higher
Than the voltage specified on the ram, Perhaps.1v higher in small increments.

Then add the other two sticks and test.

In the (distant) past, I have found the corsair ram guys customer support to be helpful.
You may want to open a support issue with them.

After I go through testing each individual RAM stick, I’ll try that then.

What you’re saying is that I got extremely lucky that these two sets worked well together on the last motherboard, but this motherboard or CPU is possibly just now showing that they won’t work well together due to how sensitive the new components are?

If I end up having that as the issue and I find out that the RAM slots nor the CPU are the culprit, I’ll gladly purchase a 4 x 8 set since the DDR4 sticks are cheaper nowadays. I’m just wanting to make sure that I don’t have a faulty motherboard RAM slots nor CPU.

 

[geofelt]

After I go through testing each individual RAM stick, I’ll try that then.

What you’re saying is that I got extremely lucky that these two sets worked well together on the last motherboard, but this motherboard or CPU is possibly just now showing that they won’t work well together due to how sensitive the new components are?

If I end up having that as the issue and I find out that the RAM slots nor the CPU are the culprit, I’ll gladly purchase a 4 x 8 set since the DDR4 sticks are cheaper nowadays. I’m just wanting to make sure that I don’t have a faulty motherboard RAM slots nor CPU.

I think a 2 x 16gb kit would be better and less expensive. The processor runs dual channel only, so there is no performance benefit with 4 sticks. There may be a performance benefit with faster ram if you chose to replace the ram.
The motherboard ram QVL list is your best authority.

 

[DoctorPebble]

I think a 2 x 16gb kit would be better and less expensive. The processor runs dual channel only, so there is no performance benefit with 4 sticks. There may be a performance benefit with faster ram if you chose to replace the ram.
The motherboard ram QVL list is your best authority.

Really? I’ve always seen that AMD CPUs like having four channels and that Intel CPUs prefer the dual channel only. Maybe very early on I trusted a source that recommended four sticks, so this is actually really nice information to hear.

Also, I didn’t know the QVL existed! Thank you for showing me that resource existed!

After this Memtest is over for this one RAM stick, I’ll just test the two RAM sticks that came together using Memtest and see if I get any errors. If there are errors with that set, I’ll test the other 2 x 8 kit of RAM and see if there’s an error.

If I don’t get any errors on the first 2 x 8 set, then I’ll boot up the PC and do the things that were giving me BSODs. If it’s running healthy, then I’ll gladly go purchase the 2 x 16 GB set. I’ll update on if this works or not.

I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction! I didn’t realize that even though I made sure that the same RAM kit was bought, that the manufacturing years will still make them different enough.

 

[80251]

Your Ryzen is only a dual channel IMC. I think only threadrippers and Epyc CPUs have 4-channel (or more) IMCs.
Having unmatched RAM sets in your build is asking for trouble because the RAM sticks might not have the same timings and it might not even be the obvious timings that are different.
Thaiphoon Burner (a freeware program) will tell you the specific timings required for your RAM, stick by stick, as well as by frequency. If the RAM timings aren't the same across both sets, you won't be able to use XMP to setup RAM timings because they will differ by set.

 

[DoctorPebble]

Your Ryzen is only a dual channel IMC. I think only threadrippers and Epyc CPUs have 4-channel (or more) IMCs.
Having unmatched RAM sets in your build is asking for trouble because the RAM sticks might not have the same timings and it might not even be the obvious timings that are different.
Thaiphoon Burner (a freeware program) will tell you the specific timings required for your RAM, stick by stick, as well as by frequency. If the RAM timings aren't the same across both sets, you won't be able to use XMP to setup RAM timings because they will differ by set.

I did not know that was even a difference in the AMD CPUs! It’s makes much more sense though considering I hear threadrippers are used for servers and stuff like that, so quad channels would make sense there? (Just my assumption). I must have gotten incredibly lucky that I was able to run the other PC the way I did for a long time. My previous set up must have given me false confidence in whether or not AMD CPUs preferred a quad set up then if it didn’t mess up on me (like it should have)…

For good news, the first RAM that got put to test successfully passed, so I’ll be testing the matching RAM in the kit in the motherboard now for testing. (The B and D set up as recommended in the manual). If this is successful, I’ll boot back to Windows and try to do the tasks that were causing me to BSOD.

Thank you for recommending the test program! But if I find out that this dual channel set up works and fixes my issues, I’ll be purchasing a 2 x 16GB 3600MHz RAM kit and just using these two sticks until the new 2 x 16 set comes in.

 

[80251]

I've found the windows 10 memory test isn't indicative of RAM (or could it be IMC?) stability. I've had memory settings that passed three or four hours of memtest AND the windows 10 memory test but still failed the prime95 largeFFTs and caused CTDs in Metro Exodus.

 

[DoctorPebble]

I've found the windows 10 memory test isn't indicative of RAM (or could it be IMC?) stability. I've had memory settings that passed three or four hours of memtest AND the windows 10 memory test but still failed the prime95 largeFFTs and caused CTDs in Metro Exodus.

Considering the fact that my RAM didn’t cause BSODs when I was playing intensive games like Helldivers 2 (incredibly CPU intensive as it maxed out my new CPU for long periods of time), the BSODs never happened. It was only happening during specific operations of low intensity, so I’ll hope that with the one set of 2 x 8 RAM passing the Memtest that it should give me enough information.

Some of the errors before were saying that an operation was accessing a memory access point that it’s not allowed to, so I could definitely see the incompatibility with quad channel with the Ryzen 7 5700x AND the two different manufactured sets of 2 x 8 sticks causing weird errors like that.

I’m testing the PC now since the test just passed with both RAM sticks in.

 

[DoctorPebble]

Hey y'all! I have an update. After doing memtest86 for one set of my 2 x 8 RAM sticks in their respective B & D slots as advised by my motherboard's manual, I went ahead and booted up Windows and started doing a few things that would cause a consistent BSOD before AND after the Windows fresh install.

I was finally able to download and install the massive ZZZ update I was mentioning being the trigger for my BSODs last night, Firefox runs smoother, my Windows taskbar doesn't feel clunky, and overall, the system feels nice.

I'll be connecting the rest of my peripherals (I'm going to be so sad if that was another cause of the BSODs). Tomorrow, I'll be getting this RAM listed at the bottom from Bestbuy tomorrow as advised by the QVL list mentioned by geofelt, its stability at 3200 Mhz (I don't want to even attempt to do 3600 Mhz and get instabilities again), and that it is dual-channel only:

I'll be leaving my PC on, surely restarting it often to install applications, and playing a variety of games and apps to see if I get any stability issues. I'll come back to this board if I encounter another BSOD. However, if I don't encounter a BSOD, I'll come back to this thread on either late Sunday or Monday to make sure you all know that this resolved my issue.

CORSAIR - VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200MHz C16 UDIMM Desktop Memory - Black Model:CMK32GX4M2E3200C16​