Board or CPU Failure?

[Soultribunal]

AMD Phenom X4 965
ASUS M4T785TD-V
4GB G.Skill Ripjaws (Swapped these out for some Crucial Sticks I had).
Corsair 750W PSU
WD 320 HDD
Win 7 64bit

The system was running fine up until last night. My Cousin and I were playing SC2 side by side when suddenly the system just nose dived and failed with a BSOD (Stop 0x000000C4).
Upon attempting to reboot I could not get any type of signal to the monitor. I switched out to my backup HD with XP on it and I managed to get it too boot, however when I attempted a Prime95 Run on it, it BSOD's right after Test 1 with IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL.

Now , naturally I figured this has to be the RAM. So I pulled out the G.SKills and just put in some Crucial Sticks that I had kicking around. This allowed me to at least boot back into Win 7, so I figured the problem was solved.

Just to double check however I gave Prime a chance to work in Win 7 to see if the computer would work after a few hours run.
Well, it failed on 3 of the 4 workers saying Hardware Failure Detected 'read stress.txt'. Mind you I couldn't find this Txt File so I have no idea what it thought failed on the computer. After that happened when I reboot the system it gave me another BSOD and took another OS repair to boot back in.

So my question is, do you think this is the CPU giving up the ghost or the Motherboard?


ST

[3.0charlie]

Run memtest on known good sticks, to stress the NB. Probably the board giving up.

edit: though IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL also means a conflict with not enough IRQ assignments. Run the rig bare-naked (hdd, 1 stick of ram, gpu) and re-test using memtest.

[chrisk]

I have done a few searches for Stop 0x000000C4 "windows 7" and IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL and drivers are what is mentioned most often.

Can you try in safe mode and then run prime? Also, try disabling onboard sound and nic, etc. and run in safe mode. Make sure your bios is updated too to possibly help with IRQ assignment issues.

[Soultribunal]

Well I've stripped it down to the point where I am running onboard vs my GTX, I'll take it down to 1 stick of Memory as well.

When I ran Memtest for win7 and the G.Skills were in the computer it failed at 55% and locked the computer. When switched over to the Cruicial sticks it BSOD'd twice where I couldn't catch what it said. Those two Failures are just ones I manged to catch, its done the whole memory dump thing on both sets of RAM that I have run, but the error has been different each time. And, to top it off like I said 3 of 4 workers failed with Hardware Failure in some TXT file that I couldn't locate.

However Memtest for Win7 Passed both tests when the Cruicals were in.

My only thoughts are the board giving up the ghost or the CPU. And it wouldn't even boot windows until I literally pulled the Power from the Back PSU before it would reset it all to the point where I could boot.

THanks for the ideas guys,
ST

[_dangtx_]

are you running this on thine table out the case after checking under heatsinks, reseating everything and what not?

pains me to see a folder down.

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

are you running this on thine table out the case after checking under heatsinks, reseating everything and what not?

pains me to see a folder down.

No need to reseat or check connections in regards to this system. It has run perfectly for 1 year now without fail so I doubt that It would be a bad connection or anything requiring that kind of attention.

For an update, I am feeling more and more like the RAM was faulty, and it screwed something up in windows when it went south, namely because although I got a few BSOD's after the inital set I have not had one since running with my Crucials onboard. BIOS is up to date before this happened, as well as new drivers (both Chipset/Graphics) so I cannot forsee why that might have been an issue. Although both 3.0 and Chisk are correct with that one error, I think that was caused by the memory doing something bad in the system.

It Ran 6 Hours of each Prime95 Test and 3 Passes of Memtest / Windows7 Memory Diagnostic Tool without another reported Failure or BSOD. So I am assuming its stable.
I'm going to try and replicate the problem by reinserting the G.skills into the system and booting it.
If it crashes and fails Windows Memory Diagnostic when I do so then its more than likely them.

i'll keep you updated,

ST

[3.0charlie]

Unless the Gskills indeed died, and in the process may have corrupted Windows - hence the IRQL error. A re-install may be required.

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by 3.0charlie

Unless the Gskills indeed died, and in the process may have corrupted Windows - hence the IRQL error. A re-install may be required.

I was thinking the same thing since the IRqL error happened after the inital major crash.
I'm gonna run the Skills Tonight, I already have an RMA setup for them (Damn G,Skill is fast) and hopefully that will be the end of it.

I get nervous on boards and with CPU's that have IMC's on board as it takes a lot more cycling of Gear to figure out issues.

Thanks 3.0,

ST

[Soultribunal]

Yay, well not too many people post when something is resolved.

I took a hunch and sent in my RAM and Board figuring it really could be one or the other.

Just received a Replacement board from ASUS (Fast Service).
The board I sent in.....they couldn't get it to POST

So, issue is resolved :)

ST

[_dangtx_]

another crappy asus board? man how many are having issues these days