random BSOD's and hard shutdowns

I have an HPE-410f, which has the same motherboard as your machine (specs HP Support document - HP Support Center).

This machine worked fine for over 2 years, but lately has been throwing random BSOD's and hard shutdowns. Poking around the net, I found that HP issued a 1 year extended warranty "enhancement" due to a known problem with these motherboards (see North America Limited Warranty Service Enhancement | HP® Support).

I've been trying to find out exactly what the problem is, but have been unsuccessful. I've tested the RAM, drive, PSU, and monitored temps while stressing both CPU and GPU. All seems fine. I also checked the northbridge and southbridge out - they do not get more than slightly warm, and I undid the heatsinks clips and gave them each a very gentle wiggle, but the heatsinks are not loose so I assume the thermal paste is fine and they are not overheating.

But the machine will still BSOD/shutdown completely randomly sometimes. Twice it has also had no video and locked up during POST, refusing to boot until it was allowed to sit a while....after 10 minutes or so, it then booted fine again.

Very strange, and stranger still that nobody seems to have a clue what the problem is with these motherboards. Was there a known bad batch of northbridge chips that year? A known bad batch of a specific cap that is found on these boards? A flakey solder point? Again, strange that you can find many posts about different model hp machines with this same motherboard and same problems, yet none of the hardware techies knows anything about the cause of the problems.

Hello eegad, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Please read the instructions here: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions, and post back with the needed information. One of our BSOD experts should be by later when able to further help. :)