Posted in r/pcmasterrace by u/Danikika94 • 222 points and 50 comments
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/pcmasterrace by /u/Danikika94 on 2024-08-05 08:50:59+00:00.

I think it’s not a news that the 13th and 14th gen intel CPUs are crashing in a very dramatical rate, however every single articles are missing to mention the most important thing. Those missing informations are the symptoms what you should be avare if you have one of those affected CPUs. Since I also bought a 14900KF in December 2023 because I wanted to upgrade my gaming PC and I wanted to enjoy it since that, but I couldn’t do that because of issues with issues and issues. I had 2 RMA replacement and the 3rd RMA is also in progress which is a straight forward refund request, so it’s my 3rd CPU within 6 month, and all of the symptoms are based on my experience, however I want this post to be a collective post where you can add additional signs and symptoms in the comment section where I’ll update this post and eventually create a huge list which will give a great indication what are the sign of a failure.

So the symptoms.:

  • The famous “Out of Video memory” errror which is now quite rare, but it’s still possible to encounter

  • Negligible | Various system instability issues, micro or visible stuttering in gaming, or hiccups for 1sec

  • Instable or even dramatic FPS drops within Unreal Engine games

  • Various memory read/write error message popup (For example my example, while running Destiny 2 and wanted to start up OBS, I couldn’t do because of many many memory read/write error popup), or application crashes due to memory issue

  • If you use USB DAC especially Focusrite Scarlet Solo, you might experience very distorted audio. This is because this instability also affects Windows audio buffer cache, so a workaround here is to set the buffer size to at least 512. (if you use another type of DAC and facing the same issue but found a workaroud, please share it)

  • In Chromium based browser during normal browsing and stuff, you might see that the page is freezing and then an error message popup saying “This page is having a problem” and the error code is “STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION”. This is also an indication if the failure is happening because this error message indicates that there’s some sort of problem within the memory access or memory management which is a CPU related task as well.

  • Games are randomly closes without any popup or indications of error, or with popup error

  • XMP instability

From this, these symptoms are major and it could be even fatal signs of an iminent failure because my 2nd CPU died after this, and also my 3rd and current CPU is also showing one of these signs (and some from above).:

  • MAJOR | The most important sign you should immediately issue an RMA or be on a very very high alarm, is BIOS post message says “USB Overcurrent protection”. You should think it’s impossible because if you have only periferials connected, then how the hell you can get those error message, but the answer is simple. Since it’s an IO part of the CPU package, it is highly possible to have issues and cooks your CPU! My 2nd CPU died immediately after this message.
  • You migh also got a BIOS post message that saying it was boot up in safe mode because of a failed attempt to bootup.
  • MAJOR | Various BSOD with some example failing components like.:

“ci.dll”

“wdf01000.sys”

“dxgkrnl.sys”

“wimfsf.sys”

And some example error code.:

“PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA”

“EXCEPTION_ON_INVALID_STACK”

“DRIVER_OVERRAN_STACK”

If you have these in an infinite loop, that means your CPU is died, so RMA should immediately request for replacement!

  • MAJOR | If you encounter the BSOD loop, then you might realize, that you won’t able to boot up a LINUX live USB.

I hope these list and the future addons will be a good indications and “guide” to you in order to what you should see and what you should be aware of.

Keep in mind, that the failure rate might differ from cpu to cpu and from one motherboard to another one.

I have an ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-A GAMING WIFI, but I have a friend who has an ASRock Z790 board with no issues.

Edit 1.:

Thank you very much for the contributions and the overall activity! You guys are amazing!

Also adding recommended symptoms to the list.:

  • Checks for Event Viewer “WHEA-Logger” Warnings. Translation Lookaside Buffer and Internal Parity errors are the two that can stick out the most, representing CPU degradation and damage.
  • “Software that runs decompression tools, like game client install patching. I had a period of time where the Xbox App would blow away large game installs (close to 100GB games like Halo MCC would end up measured in megabytes) during updates (and this would always be accompanied by desktop shortcuts being blanked…because the EXE no longer exists). I also had GoG repeatedly fail to update Cyberpunk, for example, yet a full download worked. Anything relating to decompression/diffs has the potential to start failing quite spectacularly, up to and including Windows Update itself.”

(Thank you for u/G7Scanlines)

Edit 2.:

  • I forget to add another MAJOR sign.: If you encountered the BSOD Loop, and the Linux live USB won’t boot, in the same time, Windows installation USB will also crash with BSOD!