Many crashes could point to your CPU, GPU, or RAM, or even a combination of these components.
Many crashes could point to your CPU, GPU, or RAM, or even a combination of these components.
I recently acquired an old 2014 Clevo P170SM (4800MQ, 870M, 24GB DDR3) for about 280USD. It was in decent condition except for being very dirty. While using it for gaming or general tasks, the laptop frequently crashed or triggered BSODs. I needed to diagnose the issue to secure a partial refund. After powering it on, the fans performed poorly, and I ran hwinfo which revealed the CPU was running at an extremely low temperature—99°C. This led me to suspect neglect in maintenance over its 10-year lifespan. The CPU and GPU thermal pastes were completely dry; the GPU paste had turned green slightly. The CPU felt like a PCB, and even after applying 99% isopropyl, it remained stubbornly dry. Eventually, I managed to remove all thermal paste from the heatsink and CPU die, but the surrounding paste left a greyish residue. I encountered several error codes: IRQL not less than or equal to -Page file in none page area, Memory Management, Kernel security check failure, and a Yellow Screen of Death. These issues appeared after web browsing, gaming, app installations, and booting. Initially, I thought it was CPU-related, especially since I’d overclocked before. The condition I found matched the CPU’s high temperature history. However, a Page file BSOD suggested RAM problems, prompting me to run MemTest64. After two attempts, the laptop still displayed memory management errors and crashed after logging into Windows with kernel errors. At first, it seemed like a CPU failure, but later I considered RAM issues, given the crashes during RAM tests and low usage. It’s possible the GPU was involved too, as one crash during a game coincided with GPU activity. What do you think? Is everything failing—just RAM, or is there another cause? Here are photos of the CPU post-cleaning and the Yellow Screen of Death I captured.
The boot drive is the original SSD from 2014, Samsung Evo 850 with about 97% health. I plan to run additional RAM tests. The crash seems linked to a dying CPU, but page file and memory BSODs confused me. Regarding the I7 4800MQ, does it have its own dedicated chipset memory controller or is it built into the CPU package?
WHEA doesn't track RAM usage. Microsoft also added NVMe error handling to it. The crash screen image displays a WHEA-style BSOD. Memory issues can come from the CPU itself. IRQL_Not_Less_Or_Equal is considered a memory-related problem. RAM isn't the only storage type—CPU and other storage can also cause errors. All Intel CPUs starting with the Core series include this feature (excluding servers and some embedded systems). This has been present since around 2008.