Memtest hangs

[Niko]

Hi all,

Trying to figure out why my PC hangs under heavy load, and I decided to run Memtest to see if I can get a clearer picture before I go about replacing parts...

As mentioned, my PC hangs under heavy load (such as playing a graphic intensive game such as Assassin's Creed: Origins, or a less graphically demanding game such as Hearthstone on one monitor whilst a stream or YouTube video is up on the other) but it does not hang whilst idling (for example, I am away from PC streaming something from it in another room via Plex). My PC specs are as followed:

CPU: i7 5820k 3.6ghz
MB: MSI X99S ACK
RAM: Potenza 16GB DDR4
GFX Card: MSI GTX 980
OS SSD: 512GB Crucial M2 SSD
PSU: 1000W Corsair RM

This has only been a recent problem, in the last couple of weeks, but the PC was built around 2 years ago and I haven't had a hitch with it until now.

I ran memtest86 v7.4 twice, both occasions the system froze.

On the first test, the test got as far as Test 8 with 0 errors.

The second test got as far as Test 7 with errors with 2 passes.

Could this be PSU related? My initial thoughts were my SSD was goosed, but I haven't noticed any data corruption or issues with my OS to confirm my theory, so I am beginning to lean more towards my PSU being the culprit here and was hoping to get some further advice from you guys.

Hope to hear from you soon, and Happy New Years!

Niko

[David (PassMark)]

Given that you are booting MemTest86 from a USB drive and the SSD isn't being used at all during MemTest86, you can rule out the SSD as the problem.

PSUs do often fail. But the normal bad PSU behaviour is a shut down / reboot failure to turn on.
Hangs due to a PSU (with ongoing by frozen video output) are rarer.

So CPU. MB or RAM problems are more likely.

If you have 2 sticks of 8GB, try running with one stick at a time.

[Niko]

Given that you are booting MemTest86 from a USB drive and the SSD isn't being used at all during MemTest86, you can rule out the SSD as the problem.

PSUs do often fail. But the normal bad PSU behaviour is a shut down / reboot failure to turn on.
Hangs due to a PSU (with ongoing by frozen video output) are rarer.

So CPU. MB or RAM problems are more likely.

If you have 2 sticks of 8GB, try running with one stick at a time.

I have 4 sticks of 4GB. I tested the 2 sticks on the left hand side of the MB, memtest passed with 0 errors, and tested the 2 sticks on the right and memtest passed with 0 errors.

I am quite concerned this could be MB or CPU - my initial investigations to ascertain if this was CPU related involved having task manager open in the Performance tab, and I didn't notice anything unusual. Are there any tests you could suggest to further diagnose what is causing the hardware failures?

Also, could the GPU be a likely cause of the hangs?

Thanks,

Niko

[David (PassMark)]

Depending on the motherboard you might also want to test alternate sticks (making sure you get them into dual channel mode).

Yes, it could also be the GPU. When the machine locks up in Windows, does the hard drive light keep flashing, even though the screen is locked up.

[Niko]

Unfortunately I don't have a big enough budget to afford testing other sticks and I don't know of anyone in my family or friends who’d have a spare set of DDR4 sticks lying around

I'm using a M.2 SSD, and it's unlike your typical HDD. It's literally a stick that plugs directly onto the MB via a dedicated slot and doesn't have any peripheral lights or anything that signifies when data is being read/written.

UPDATE: I retested my rig with all RAM sticks and it passed memtest successfully with 0 errors. I am going to stress test the GPU and see what results I get from that.