[Redstreblo]

My computer will give me random BSODs if I am playing games, browsing the internet or just idle doing nothing. No one application seems to trigger them. The blue screens are also different, some are interrupt exception not handled, driver irql not less or equal or system service exception. I am going to attach several .dmp files to this post and hope that there is somebody out there who may have some ideas.

I have changed my RAM and that fixed some sudden freezes where I have to hold down the power button to shut down the pc. I took out one of my graphics cards and that took care of some horizontal blue lines i saw in GTA 4 and Diablo 3 had some graphical issues get resolved by removing it as well (have yet to test that card by itself to see if it is the card, or the SLI set up that caused it).

I thought that my BSODs may be caused by my SSD that ran my OS, but I changed that too and I am still getting them (although windows starts up fine now, before it would say something like boot drive not found).

3 of them occurred in the past 3 days. Two of them are an interrupt exception not handled from 4/11 and 4/26 that may not be relevant because those are before i changed my SSD and RAM.

051812-13681-01.dmp http://www.mediafire.com/?y46yp7zgu2nwt14
051712-11325-01.dmp http://www.mediafire.com/?49qn5f8mxwk84xu
051612-10873-01.dmp http://www.mediafire.com/?r51i3iqffjkv7e0
042612-12448-01.dmp http://www.mediafire.com/?5yf41kn9d9sp5mk
041112-22354-01.dmp http://www.mediafire.com/?vc34hgmv7vsmuot

(These are all the .dmp files in C:/Windows/Minidump)

Also:

WER-15397-0.sysdata.xml http://www.mediafire.com/view/?lvk662m9onep3s8

(C:/Users/I'm not telling you/AppData/Local/Temp)

[MP-Ryan]

What are your system temperatures?

[Redstreblo]

right now i'm running 40 degrees C idle 70 degrees C under 100 percent load using Prime95. (Intel i7 960)

[jr2]

Do you have a known good power supply that you could use?  Shot in the dark; maybe your PSU is flaking out and the components you are replacing just handle the crappy voltage fluctuations better.

[Klaustrophobia]

did you recently have a storm or something that could have caused a surge?  it sounds like you've got a LOT of hardware failures happening at once.  PSU would be the next place i look.

[BlueFlames]

right now i'm running 40 degrees C idle 70 degrees C under 100 percent load using Prime95. (Intel i7 960)

Intel rates the Core i7 as having a maximum operating temperature of 67.5°C, so you could be pushing your luck with your temperature under load (especially if one core is running hotter than the others).  I'd also be interested in the temperatures that your GPU is hitting.  Depending on how your new hardware is positioned in your case or how wiring got moved about while swapping components in and out, something might be disrupting ventilation, causing your machine to run just that little bit hotter than it used to.  Either that, or the machine has been slowly cooking, from day one, and problems are only now starting to manifest.

There is also the possibility that there's a driver issue at work here, but I'm leaning toward a heat problem.

[Redstreblo]

I think the heat issue is it... it usually only happens in demanding applications (games) and it has been getting hot lately. I am using air cooling and all my fans work. It's an open case at the moment but that doesn't seem to help it. What should I do to get my general temperatures down? (stock coolers on Graphics cards - CoolerMaster V8 on CPU). 2 200mm fans (1  intake 1 exhaust) and 1 120mm fan (exhaust).

My wire management is pretty darn good, no cables are between the components, most of them are behind the motherboard and pop out only as far as necessary to reach the components they power. I blow my system out of dust on a regular basis, no dust/hair caked into my components. I took out a hard drive cage that I am not using, so there is more airflow through the front of the case than would be otherwise. My computer is running pretty quiet, no fans are spinning excessively fast. It seems to run quiet up to the blue screen (could it be that my fans aren't raising their RPMs when they should)?

[LHN91]

Depends on how the fans are connected. Oftentimes case fans are hooked up direct to the PSU and thus aren't controlled by the Mobo and it's headers' controls. Also, considering your idle temps are a bit high as well (though not entirely unusual - my CPU runs about there too, but I seem to have received a bit of a near-faulty chip, as it runs significantly hotter than reviews/benchmarks have shown for mine) it likely couldn't hurt to redo your thermal paste. Especially considering that cooler should be perfectly capable of keeping those temps down.

Also, having more exhaust than intake, IIRC, isn't usually a good thing. You end up drawing from cracks in the case and from the air around the case, as opposed to the (hopefully) cool air from the front of the case. Might want to consider revamping that part of the layout.

Edit: After re-reading your last post, I think thermal paste might be your first stop to check. Fairly cheap to do as well. It just seems that by all other accounts, you have good system building principles in place for the most part.

[jr2]

Ah.. good point LHN91, I recommend Arctic Silver 5; anyone else have recommendations?

Sometimes crappy thermal paste eventually dries out and then doesn't work right..

[Flipside]

I had to swap my i7 over to liquid cooling because of heat issues, it really doesn't seem to be designed to run any kind of stressful application without it. My temp dropped to about 45' once I'd added it and the system has been pretty much rock-solid since. Problem was, it also required a new case and power supply, but the outlay was worth it in the end.

[Ghostavo]

I use stock cooling on my i7 860 and run chess engines almost 24/7...

[Flipside]

Yup, there was no hint of a problem with mine either for quite a while, and then I kept getting blue-screens and lock-ups. It was whilst I was putting in a new CPU fan that I noticed faint discoloration on the CPU and decided to go full liquid cooled for safety.

I will say this for the i7 though, they are tough little bastards. My original one was running at 99' solid for a while because the guy who fitted it hadn't put enough arctic silver on and it had all collected on one side of the CPU, but it kept on ticking, even if it wasn't happy about it.

[pecenipicek]

Yup, there was no hint of a problem with mine either for quite a while, and then I kept getting blue-screens and lock-ups. It was whilst I was putting in a new CPU fan that I noticed faint discoloration on the CPU and decided to go full liquid cooled for safety.

I will say this for the i7 though, they are tough little bastards. My original one was running at 99' solid for a while because the guy who fitted it hadn't put enough arctic silver on and it had all collected on one side of the CPU, but it kept on ticking, even if it wasn't happy about it.

this.

i'm running mine on the stock cooler and i'm managing the fans via speedfan, the bugger doesnt go past 64-ish.

of course, since this is a stock cooler, the noise is a bit irritating when it goes full tilt, but its still drowned out by my GPU cooler, so i can live with it.

[Aardwolf]

How do you go about finding what temperature your CPU is?

[General Battuta]

How do you go about finding what temperature your CPU is?

RealTemp for intels.

[pecenipicek]

or, HWMonitor for everything

even some laptops.

[Redstreblo]

Issue solved, it wasn't heat related. I actually had a bad data hard drive (system drive was fine - data failed). I changed out my 1 TB  hard drive that was almost full of data to a 2 TB hard drive (transferred data fine with the intel data migration software) and no BSOD so far. been 2 days so far as well with several hours of straight gaming. I'll re-post if I get another BSOD saying oops just a coincidence, but I did have somebody at a tech store suggest the HDD, so maybe he was right.

[General Battuta]

You should check your temps anyway - it's always a good idea to redo your thermal paste every couple years.

[LHN91]

You should check your temps anyway - it's always a good idea to redo your thermal paste every couple years.

QFT. Though I'm glad you found the main issue, your temps should still be lower with that cooler which implies that the CPU could benefit from a thermal paste redo anyways.

[BlueFlames]

Issue solved, it wasn't heat related. I actually had a bad data hard drive (system drive was fine - data failed). I changed out my 1 TB  hard drive that was almost full of data to a 2 TB hard drive (transferred data fine with the intel data migration software) and no BSOD so far. been 2 days so far as well with several hours of straight gaming. I'll re-post if I get another BSOD saying oops just a coincidence, but I did have somebody at a tech store suggest the HDD, so maybe he was right.

So the tech store had you take the next troubleshooting step of replacing a hard drive for ~$150, instead of replacing your thermal compound for ~$5-$10, when your CPU was known to be operating beyond the recommended maximum temperature?  If you do continue getting BSODs, I recommend you take the $140 price difference out of the salesperson's kneecaps.