BSOD on new system build - Driving me crazy

Hi,
This BSOD is really twisting my melon! I built a new pc about 4 weeks ago now and it hasn't been stable since.

Pentium D 915 2.8Ghz
Asus P5B-E (and now P5W DH)
2x 1GB Elpida DDR2 RAM
Asus x1650 graphics 512MB (now powercolor x1950 256MB)
2x WD2500YS AHCI mode
Coolermaster Extreme 650w PSU
Not Overclocked

I have tried clean installs of winxpsp2 and vista. I've swapped motherboards and graphics cards too. Interesting to note that the problem went away for about a week after i swapped out the graphics card, so i thought it might have been dodgy. But now the problem is back with avengence! I have tried disabling most thnigs in the BIOS of both motherboards including sound and LAN. Have also tried giving the CPU and RAM a little more juice.

I have run memtestx86 all day without errors. I have run prim95 and 3dmark all day fine too. It's so random in that it will do it very often for a while, then will go away for a bit. Today I've had to have 3 go's at writing this new thread!

I will attach a couple of WinDBG analysis files. Let me know if anyone needs anything else? I'm hoping someone can get some idea of what these minidumps are telling me? To me they look kinda random. Although I have seen the win32k.sys one a few times I know - obvisouly these 4 dumps are 4 of about 60 that I have had in total I would guess.

EDIT: cant attach things in here so:
http://spark-works.co.uk/files/Mini052907-01.dmp.txt
http://spark-works.co.uk/files/Mini052907-02.dmp.txt
http://spark-works.co.uk/files/Mini052907-03.dmp.txt
http://spark-works.co.uk/files/Mini052907-04.dmp.txt

 

You didn't mention the manufacturer but I'll assume those are the new Mushkin DDR2 modules. They are supposed to be quite nice.

Looking at your dumps (I'm not a qualified dump reader/interpreter) and reading your problem description, you're right - this machine appears to be all over the place. Quite often that can be indicative of a general memory related issue and thats what I would concentrate on first. Assuming (dangerous to assume but you can verify) this is Mushkin, I'll pass along this piece of information......... "The normal DDR2 voltage specification is 1.8V, but the best performance can be had with the Mushkin Elpida modules using 2.1V to 2.5V memory voltage. What separates the Mushkin XP2 PC2-5300 DDR memory from a lot of others at this point in time is how these modules thrive on voltage. This memory offers flexibility, whether used for video rendering, gaming or overclocking. Mushkin warrants this product to run at a voltage range from 2.1 to 2.3 volts, although Elpida's own specifications indicate this is a 1.8 volt part. "

Not sure if the above will be of assistance but its what I would suggest trying first.

 

Pete C - what log files do you want?

Rockster - thanks for the input. I bought the elpida ram from ebay (which doesn't fill me with confidence). Heres the link:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....MEWN:IT&viewitem=&item=320109788856&rd=1&rd=1

SPD tells me it's 800mhz @1.8v and manufacturer 'A-Data'. But as the ebay listing says it will run at 1066@2.2v. So is possibly the same RAM as your are talking about... I have tried it at different voltages and it doesn't seem to make a blind bit of difference. I am only running it at 800mhz atm too. Although i am waiting to get this system stable before running watercooling, hopefully at 1066mhz...

I will try using each RAM stick on thier own and see if that makes a difference. Maybe I was trusting memtest+86 too much?

 

Quite possibly. I'm generally a little skeptical of A-Data, which is more of a mass market or "budget" brand although I have seen their DDR run just fine in a non-taxing environment. What kind of timings are you running? And, what ratio?

 

5-5-5-18 by SPD.

i guess its 1:2 FSB:RAM ratio as the cpu runs at 200 QDR and memory at 400 DDR

 

Well, it doesn't look like there's a whole lot you can do to relax those timings and pick up a little more stability - those are pretty "relaxed" settings as is. I'll leave this alone for the time being but it sure would be nice to see what some better memory might do for your system.

Hopefully you'll get those dumps posted and someone can lend more specific guidance. Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

 

Well. I took one of the ram sticks out this morning and it has been stable all day /liquidsmoke touches wood

I will leave it until the end of the week to make sure it's stable I think as it's such a intermittant problem.

I did noticed before I put the RAM into the motherboard in the first place that there were some nice sticky fingerprints on one of them (the one i took out as it happens). This morning I took another look at it on it's contacts and sure enough there is one nice sticky fingerprint on some of them. It actually looks like thermal compound. I wasnt bothered before as I thought it would be just on the heat spreaders, but looks like some wally put a big print right on the contacts...