- Feb 28, 2021
- 2
- 0
- 10
I have recently started a build mostly from scratch (except the graphics card; the new card is waiting to be shipped):
Freshly installed Windows 10 Home
One thing to note is that the video card is so old that it does not support UEFI, so the BIOS is running in the MSI's "Compatibility Support Mode".
When I first put the system together, it was so unstable that I couldn't install Windows. It would simply turn off after a few seconds. After searching the internet and trying MemTest86, I came to the conclusion that it must be CPU instability.
So I started underclocking the processor. Eventually I arrived at 3.2Ghz, which was stable enough to install Windows 10. I decided that I could live with the performance hit, but unfortunately, the system was still unstable and would shutdown randomly every few hours, not necessarily under load. High CPU / memory utilizing benchmark utilities do not seem to provoke the crashes. Nothing helpful is left in the Event Viewer:
I've found that underclocking and undervolting further seems to increase stability. However, even at 2.9Gz and -0.025V it still crashed.
Here are some additional steps I've taken without success:
I would very much appreciate any suggestions for how to diagnose the problem.
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6 Core
- MSI B550M Pro-VDH Wifi
- G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4 PC4-25600 3200MHz 16x2 (F4-3200C16D-32GVK)
- Corsair CX 550 Bronze
- Kingston 500GB A2000 M.2 2280
- EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti 2GB (02G-P4-3651-KR)
Freshly installed Windows 10 Home
One thing to note is that the video card is so old that it does not support UEFI, so the BIOS is running in the MSI's "Compatibility Support Mode".
When I first put the system together, it was so unstable that I couldn't install Windows. It would simply turn off after a few seconds. After searching the internet and trying MemTest86, I came to the conclusion that it must be CPU instability.
So I started underclocking the processor. Eventually I arrived at 3.2Ghz, which was stable enough to install Windows 10. I decided that I could live with the performance hit, but unfortunately, the system was still unstable and would shutdown randomly every few hours, not necessarily under load. High CPU / memory utilizing benchmark utilities do not seem to provoke the crashes. Nothing helpful is left in the Event Viewer:
I've found that underclocking and undervolting further seems to increase stability. However, even at 2.9Gz and -0.025V it still crashed.
Here are some additional steps I've taken without success:
- Re-seating every component including the CPU
- Changing the memory stick locations. Currently they are in 2A and 2B as suggested by the motherboard manual.
- Changing the memory speed. This only made things more unstable, so bad that I couldn't get it to start long enough to change the settings back in the BIOS. I had to reset the settings.
- Upgrading the BIOS to the newest version
- Installing the most up-to-date chipset drivers for Windows
- Tried another (even older) graphics card
I would very much appreciate any suggestions for how to diagnose the problem.
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