Check your motherboard and CPU first.
Check your motherboard and CPU first.
Hey everyone, thanks for your support. I've been putting in a lot of effort on this project. It seems the PC has been acting up since not using it for quite some time. By September 1, 2022, the system began locking down heavily with intense CPU usage. After resetting the power, the motherboard—something I’ve dealt with before—wouldn’t recognize my NVMe boot device. There were two BSODs linked to DCP Watchdog violations, but the machine keeps locking even when errors appear or not. Sometimes it powers back up and finishes booting. Mem tests came back clean, showing no memory issues. Samsung Magician passed all checks without errors. Windows File Check found a corrupted file, though I think that’s probably from the crashes themselves since nothing changed. Norton ran multiple scans with no threats detected. I tried checking drives and updating as much as possible before it froze again. Personally, I’m worried about my CPU overheating after overclocking, and the motherboard has been struggling with heat for a while. Here’s what I have:
- Windows 10 64-bit
- AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (14nm) 3.2 GHz, 6 cores (OC 3.9)
- Corsair H100i 77 CFM liquid cooler
- Gigabyte GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4 board
- Corsair Vengeance LPX 8 GB & 16 GB DDR4
- Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVME (Windows boot)
- Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB M.2 NVME
- Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB M.2 NVME
- Seagate BarraCuda 2 TB 3.5" HDD
- Corsair RM850 850W, 80+ Gold certified
Specs: 2023 update, January 10.
I suggest testing a single RAM module first. As @CommanderAlex mentioned, combining various types can lead to problems since they operate differently. Even though they’re from the same brand, they might not be identical models.
I removed the smaller ram kit and it seems to have improved stability. Still, I keep encountering issues with motherboard failure to reliably detect the NVMe drive after restarts. I suspect a GLCKIO2.sys might be malware, but I can't locate it or confirm its activity because it keeps failing to start. I'll attempt to reload my old BIOS settings to see if restoring fewer RAM parameters brings me back to the original configuration.
I managed to revert to the original BIOS configuration and overclocked the CPU once more. The system remains stable, but I still sense something isn’t quite right. I’m updating my recovery software since outdated versions might have contributed to the problem. Once I run some tests, I’ll check if the NVMe drive experiences any issues again and perform a crash stress test. I’m puzzled by the RAM—despite passing memory tests and being in use for years, it seems to be the cause of this instability.