Temporary Stalling During Hammer Test

[missingstring]

Hey all,

So I've been recently having some BSOD troubles with a brand new build and decided to run memtest to see if there's any issue with my ram.

Well, I did and after about 6 hours the test completed with no errors. So far so good. However, I noticed that during the hammer test (and only during the hammer test) memtest would appear to lock up for a few minutes. Everything on screen would freeze (CPU State, Time, etc) but would eventually resume after letting it go. It recorded none of these freezes as errors but it's still a little concerning.

Is it normal for memtest to stall in this way when running? Or should I start looking at new RAM?

[David (PassMark)]

Small pause of a few seconds are normal. Not minutes however. But it is unlikely that the cause of the pause is bad RAM.

What are the specs of the machine?

[missingstring]

Mobo: Z390 Auros Ultra
CPU: i7 9700k
RAM: 16 GB (Two sticks) Trident Z RGB DDR4 (f4-3200c16D-16GTZR)
970 Evo Plus NVMe M.2
GTX 580

Temps on my CPU are fine, I'm using a Corsair AIO cooler. And the GTX 580 is from a previous build and has never caused me issues. I've used the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool and that all came up as a pass. CPU temps never broke 55 during the stress test. Memtest and Windows 10's internal memchecks both came up as passes. Chkdsk didn't report any errors on my NVMe. BIOS is second latest for the board (F6 - though F7 doesn't seem to add anything that would impact my system.) All drivers are up to date as far as I can tell.

So I'm left trying to figure out what part of my PC is bad. I decided to reinstall windows and that seems to have made things worse. I'm getting hammered by BSODs. The more recent ones seem to be PFN_LIST_CORRUPT and BAD_POOL_CALLER. I'm starting to think maybe it's my mobo? But all my BSODs seem to be memory related.

Thanks for the help by the way. It's my first "from scratch" PC build (i've only ever added components to pre-built rigs) and I'm ready to tear my hair out.

[David (PassMark)]

Try running windows with just 1 stick of RAM for a while, then swap to the other stick. 8GB is enough for most tasks in Windows.

[missingstring]

I'll do that, thanks. I'm going to take the lazy way out first though. My RAM modules can still be returned, so I'm just gonna grab a new pair and see if the errors go away. If not, I'll know it's not the RAM and I'll need to cleanse my PC of demons.

Out of curiosity, you don't happen to have any clue as to what might cause the test to behave that way do you?

[David (PassMark)]

No we don't know. Might be a BIOS firmware issue.