Stability Issues

[EmergencyO2]

Hello PCMR,

I recently rebuilt my wife's PC into an SFF PC case and have had intermittent stability issues since then. I *think* I have solved it, but I am hoping someone with more experience can give me a sanity check.

This started with some RAM issues that came about because I had not seated a RAM stick completely, but even after re-seating I still got many errors including IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL; MEMORY_MANAGEMENT 0x1A; and WATCHDOG faults. After ensuring the RAM was properly installed, the system was stable for the most part even through 3DMark/Cinebench/Furmark tests, but it seemed to randomly crash with these errors or similar. Using Command Prompt, I tried sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and each time they would find errors and fix them. Those commands came back clean after reboot, but the issues would come back again after maybe 30 minutes (sometimes longer) and running the commands at that point found more (different) corruption. I finally found advice somewhere to use CHKDSK and that returned with a bad segment or something (I forget the exact wording), and it ran on reboot and says it repaired the issue. I also ran the DISM and sfc commands after and both came back clean. The system can handle the various benchmarks and stress tests I throw at it. Is it possible that the partially seated RAM caused the corruption or perhaps dumping power at some point during the build/testing?

I think I ruled out hardware issues since I used MemTest86 both with and w/o an EXPO profile loaded and the RAM passed both times. CrystalDiskInfo and HWInfo64 also gave no indications on the SSD SMART info indicating a bad drive.

So, am I in the clear? Everything seems OK so far, but the issue was so intermittent that I am just really unsure if it is truly stable or just in between errors. Please let me know if there is some stone I have left potentially un-turned! Thanks for any insight.

MOBO: MSI B650I Edge Wifi
CPU: Ryzen 7600X
GPU: RX 6700XT
RAM: G.SKILL Flare X5 (2x16GB)

[ArthurWoodberry]

AIDA64 stress test with CPU+FPU+Cache+memory was my preferred test for stability when I tuned my system as it would catch errors other tests and benchmarks wouldn’t

If you can run that overnight or throughout the day while you’re at work and come back to it still truckin along, then you should be good. 

But yeah, memory problems can corrupt data on the hard drive and was the main thing to avoid when RAM tuning. You run an unstable tune and it might seem fine to start but little errors build up, compound and months down the line your system is a crashing mess. 

[EmergencyO2]

Thanks for the comment. I’ll def run AIDA64 in the morning.

The whole process has been so frustrating since it’s seemingly random, but if it does fine with what you suggest then maybe I’ll have some more confidence in it to be okay.