Hi, I've been having irregular problems with crashes, slowdowns, and occasional BSODs and CTDs, for over 3 years since I built my current pc. And because they didn't seem to have any pattern, I always suspected software issues rather than hardware, and it took me a long time to discover that they only happen with one of the two ram sticks. (should've tested that earlier, I know...)
SPECS:
(All default settings, memory at XMP)
Gigabyte B450 Aorus M
ADATA XPG SPECTRIX D41 8GB DDR4 3000MHz x 2 (individual sticks that came separately)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Gigabyte NVIDIA 1660Ti OC
Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
Western Digital Blue 7200RPM 1TB
Thermaltake TP GRAND RGB 650W Gold 80+
The story is that I've ran countless tests, updated stuff, and more over the years, to try to figure out why certain games would crash a lot, but many others (the majority in fact) would be fine. Now I've forgotten lot's of what I did ofc, but every diagnostic I did came out fine. Problem was always in games, photoshop, 3D benchmarks, and maybe 1 or 2 other apps I don't remember.
What happens is that the apps will start and sometimes even run for 3 or 4 hours, but then crash, and only a full pc restart would "refresh" that a bit until it crashes again. However, many times it did not work and things would crash a lot after restart anyway, so if it really made a difference it was erratic. The crashes create reports of varied driver crashes, often video ones, and errors coming up from game engines often mention "device removed", "memory exceptions."
Eventually, I discovered that they only happen with one stick (tried it on default and XMP only), and nearly every game or benchmark that crashes uses OpenGL or DirectX12. AFAIK no DirectX11 or older game has crashed on me enough to be the same issue, but some DX12 or OGL apps have ran well without issues so its not a 100% trigger.
Some examples: Control crashes in DX12, not in DX11, Cyberpunk, Warzone 2100 crashes on OGL not on DX or Vulkan, Doom and Doom Eternal, Photoshop CC2019
Unigine Heaven, Superposition, Furmark, all crash on OGL. GFXBench however, runs all tests fine on all APIs except for the OGL offscreen tests, which all crash and could never finish.
So, what I want to know is what does everyone think my case might be about: faulty stick, or different stability threshold than for the other module? or maybe it is actually a software problem, or another part is the issue?
If there could be a simple fix like a tweak in the bios that'd be great, since going through the warranty process is more work and I'm scared they might not be able to reproduce the issue or won't care because of how specific it seems to be.
Thanks a lot, sorry for all the text.
SPECS:
(All default settings, memory at XMP)
Gigabyte B450 Aorus M
ADATA XPG SPECTRIX D41 8GB DDR4 3000MHz x 2 (individual sticks that came separately)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Gigabyte NVIDIA 1660Ti OC
Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
Western Digital Blue 7200RPM 1TB
Thermaltake TP GRAND RGB 650W Gold 80+
The story is that I've ran countless tests, updated stuff, and more over the years, to try to figure out why certain games would crash a lot, but many others (the majority in fact) would be fine. Now I've forgotten lot's of what I did ofc, but every diagnostic I did came out fine. Problem was always in games, photoshop, 3D benchmarks, and maybe 1 or 2 other apps I don't remember.
What happens is that the apps will start and sometimes even run for 3 or 4 hours, but then crash, and only a full pc restart would "refresh" that a bit until it crashes again. However, many times it did not work and things would crash a lot after restart anyway, so if it really made a difference it was erratic. The crashes create reports of varied driver crashes, often video ones, and errors coming up from game engines often mention "device removed", "memory exceptions."
Eventually, I discovered that they only happen with one stick (tried it on default and XMP only), and nearly every game or benchmark that crashes uses OpenGL or DirectX12. AFAIK no DirectX11 or older game has crashed on me enough to be the same issue, but some DX12 or OGL apps have ran well without issues so its not a 100% trigger.
Some examples: Control crashes in DX12, not in DX11, Cyberpunk, Warzone 2100 crashes on OGL not on DX or Vulkan, Doom and Doom Eternal, Photoshop CC2019
Unigine Heaven, Superposition, Furmark, all crash on OGL. GFXBench however, runs all tests fine on all APIs except for the OGL offscreen tests, which all crash and could never finish.
So, what I want to know is what does everyone think my case might be about: faulty stick, or different stability threshold than for the other module? or maybe it is actually a software problem, or another part is the issue?
If there could be a simple fix like a tweak in the bios that'd be great, since going through the warranty process is more work and I'm scared they might not be able to reproduce the issue or won't care because of how specific it seems to be.
Thanks a lot, sorry for all the text.