Random BSOD on new custom builds

Alan White · 23 Nov 2014

Hi, essenbe. Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I have the latest BIOS: F5 as listed here.

At default settings C6/C7 State Support is set to Auto - not sure what that gives. I tried with it disabled but that causes crashes. Perhaps I should try explicitly enabling it?

Yes, the PSU says it's Haswell-compatible here though I've read that some PSUs claim to be compatible but aren't. I guess the only way to check this is with another PSU though that would mean buying one with no guarantee of success.

essenbe · 23 Nov 2014

My personal opinion: I think it is much of a motherboard implementation of the low power state or that Intel outdid themselves this time. the trend is to go lower in power usage. They may have gone right to the limit this time. There are too many people having the same issues as you. When this first started, Intel, on it's own boards, disabled C6/C7 by default and really buried the setting where it was pretty difficult to get to. They said they did that because many people had non compliant PSUs. My opinion is they knew they were borderline on the low power state and many PSUs, even the ones compliant with the Intel standard could not cope with a 0.05V setting. For a PSU, that is very close to off. That is simply my personal opinion. I am not an Electrical Engineer and don't play one on television, but there are too many people having the same problem with different motherboards and some with top of the line PSUs. There is obviously something going on we don't know about yet.

Alan White · 30 Nov 2014

I fear you're right, in which case there's not much more to be done. I could make a case to the supplier that the hardware isn't up to spec but there's little to be gained by that as there's no guarantee that any other combination of hardware would work any better. I can live with just using hibernation rather than sleep.

I've certainly learned a lot during this diagnosis. Many thanks to essenbe and Boozad for the education and the assistance.

essenbe · 30 Nov 2014

Alan, you are more than welcome for anything I have done to help. I really don't know what that was though. I didn't solve your problems. Everything I wrote above is just my personal opinion, not based on fact, just suspicion. Please take it as that, with the understanding that I may be way off base. The fact still remains that too many people have this problem for it to be a mere coincidence. At the same time, many more don't. Why that is, I have no clue. I stuck with Ivy Bridge because I liked the way it runs, I have 2 excellent CPUs, and I saw little that Haswell brought to the table for me. It had nothing to do with your issue, as I have Hibernation disabled and my power options set to never sleep. Therefore, it would have been a non issue for me. If you ever find the cause of your problem, I would appreciate you coming back and telling me what it is. As it stands, I consider this thread a failure for me, as I couldn't solve your problem. The best of luck to you, my friend.