[SOLVED] PC keeps freezing during gaming (more during Valorant)

[Morris_c0de]

Hello everyone,

I'm posting here because I'm kinda at my wit's end. I've been working on my boyfriend's PC for the last week, and I just for the life of me cannot get this thing to stop freezing. I have a fair amount of knowledge about PC hardware, but I'm definitely no expert. Since he got it five years ago, it will freeze while playing games. Not all the time, but maybe every other or every third match of LoL, and almost every match of Valorant. Happens in pretty much every game, but way more in Valorant. It also will occasionally crash instead of freeze, and it will rarely do it while idling as well. He's compiled almost all the error codes he's received over the years when it would crash instead of freeze:

driver_irql_not_less_or_equal windows 10
kmode_exception_not_handled
system_service_exception
critical_process_died
blinitializelibrary failed 0xc00001


Now, I took on the challenge of fixing the PC myself. I checked every driver for the PC, updated the bios, did a couple of restart fresh and three clean installs. I used Samsung's Magician program to check the SSD's health, optimized it, and updated it's driver. His problems have been happening from day one, and since then the GPU and SSD was replaced. I bought another identical motherboard to his, ASUS Z170K, and am sending it back because the problems are still happening. A friend had an extra power supply rated at 750W, kind of overkill, and we just confirmed it did not fix the problem either. I've done a ton of temperature tests and there's been no overheating that I've seen. I've done MemTest86 twice with no errors. I've done the Command Prompt -> RestoreHealth feature as well.I'm out of ideas. I really don't want to replace the processor right now, because to get another of what he has, Intel i7-6700K would be like $300 right now. However, if that's what is wrong, that's what is wrong, you know? If anyone has any ideas or wants to ask any questions, please let me know, because I'm not sure where to go from here.

Here's what the TechGuy system info utility gathered:

Tech Support Guy System Info Utility version 1.0.0.9
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 Home, 64 bit, Build 19041, Installed 20200627191116.000000-300
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz, Intel64 Family 6 Model 94 Stepping 3, CPU Count: 8
Total Physical RAM: 8 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
Hard Drives: C: 930 GB (848 GB Free); D: 930 GB (930 GB Free);
Motherboard: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z170-K, ver Rev X.0x, s/n 150749571301884
System: American Megatrends Inc., ver ALASKA - 1072009, s/n System Serial Number
Antivirus: Windows Defender, Enabled and Updated

 

[InvalidError]

There are thee things I would try:
1- disable C6 power-saving state in BIOS to reduce the likelihood that your problem is caused by the PSU/VRM struggling to keep up with fast transients
2- re-install Windows on a spare HDD/SSD to rule out random leftover junk messing up Windows
3- run memtest86+ for 10+ hours to make reasonably sure you don't have an intermittent memory bit (though with address space randomization, the likelihood of the same intermittent bit landing in code that triggers the error is pretty low.)

One of my friends bricked his z67 board and I tried his i7-2600 on my h77 only to find out that his CPU has an intermittent issue that causes it to crash every 3-5 days. With my i5, my PC runs for months at a time between Windows and driver updates.

 

[Morris_c0de]

There are thee things I would try:
1- disable C6 power-saving state in BIOS to reduce the likelihood that your problem is caused by the PSU/VRM struggling to keep up with fast transients
2- re-install Windows on a spare HDD/SSD to rule out random leftover junk messing up Windows
3- run memtest86+ for 10+ hours to make reasonably sure you don't have an intermittent memory bit (though with address space randomization, the likelihood of the same intermittent bit landing in code that triggers the error is pretty low.)

One of my friends bricked his z67 board and I tried his i7-2600 on my h77 only to find out that his CPU has an intermittent issue that causes it to crash every 3-5 days. With my i5, my PC runs for months at a time between Windows and driver updates.

I'll run the Memtest86 while I'm at work all day tomorrow. I don't know about option 2, just because it's been the OS has been on two different storage devices (a HDD and then a SSD) to try and fix the problem, and it didn't work. I'm not sure about the C6 power-saving state, I'll definitely give it a try, but I will say that the PSU I just put in it is a 750W, as opposed to the 500W that was in it before, so it should be well above the needs of the PC. I appreciate the help, and will come back with results.

Also, these freezes are nightly, sometimes twice a night. If the CPU could be that frequently causing crashes, it's the next step we'll look into. I'd put the CPU in my rig, but mine is AMD chipset, sooo.... yeah.

 

[Morris_c0de]

There are thee things I would try:
1- disable C6 power-saving state in BIOS to reduce the likelihood that your problem is caused by the PSU/VRM struggling to keep up with fast transients
2- re-install Windows on a spare HDD/SSD to rule out random leftover junk messing up Windows
3- run memtest86+ for 10+ hours to make reasonably sure you don't have an intermittent memory bit (though with address space randomization, the likelihood of the same intermittent bit landing in code that triggers the error is pretty low.)

One of my friends bricked his z67 board and I tried his i7-2600 on my h77 only to find out that his CPU has an intermittent issue that causes it to crash every 3-5 days. With my i5, my PC runs for months at a time between Windows and driver updates.

Sorry for the Wait! I couldn't really find a way to disable specifically the C6 State, only a way to disable all C-states. At first it seemed to help, but now it's right back to the same. I ran the MemTest for a long time too, and no errors were found.

 

[InvalidError]

Well, since the message sounds like the APIC driver is getting interrupt requests that are out of bounds and you have tried everything I could think of for possibly fixable stuff, the next thing to try is removing or disabling all non-essential hardware to see if you can get rid of the spurious interrupt source. If you still get crashes from out-of-bounds interrupts, then it may be the APIC itself (the part of the CPU that manages interrupts) that is having glitches.