Random BSODs, MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, ntoskrnl.exe

Dave76 · 02 Jan 2012

Check the clearance for the RAM slot closest to your CPU.
You might consider getting new fans for your Frio. Look for low noise, high volume and high pressure, the pressure is important for a CPU cooler.

I was looking at freeing up my first RAM slot (blocked by the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ CPU cooler, good cooler but blocked any RAM with a heatsink) so I got a Corsair H80. Great water cooler, very noisy fans when on high. Got Noctua NF P12 (quiet, high volume, high pressure - made for CPU coolers) and they are very quiet.
There are other quiet CPU cooler fans on the market now.

Any of these should work fine.
Top 5 Heatsinks

jonnyb · 03 Jan 2012

Interesting development... I was reading up on my Frio and determined that if the installation / thermal paste was done properly, running the fans on low (instead of the current high setting) should be able to handle the cooling while reducing the noise level from 62 dba to 37. So I decided to keep the Frio and just re-apply the thermal paste. I've never opened up a case before, so I grabbed the old Frio box to see if I could handle the instructions in the manual. When I opened the box, one of the two fans was still in there...the place (micro center) that built my machine never installed it. I'm guessing that could be a major reason why this is happening. I'm going to head there after work and have it installed (hopefully along with a thermal paste re-app).

Dave76 · 03 Jan 2012

Two fans, in a push/pull configuration, will give you lower temps.

Try your 2-fans setup on low/med/high speed settings to check the cooling difference.
Your Gigabyte board should have a auto CPU Fan setting, this will run the fan at lower speed until more cooling is needed, then it will increase up to max.
The stock Corsair fans were actually a couple degrees cooler on medium then when on high.

For comparison.
The Noctua NF P12 are 19.8 dba on high speed.
Airflow: 92.3 m³/h
Static Pressure: 1.68 mm H2O

There are other fans with similar specs.

jonnyb · 03 Jan 2012

Okay, I've learned a lot about coolers in the last day or so. Turns out there was a very good reason the second fan wasn't installed on my Frio -- it didn't fit b/c of the first RAM slot (as you mentioned Dave). Microcenter still should have told me and I would have went with a different cooler that fit, but that's water under the bridge at this point.

I've reapplied the thermal paste for the Frio and ran Prime95 again (but only for an hour...need sleep); the results were much improved over the last time when temps hit 73* in 1 minute. However, I'm not sure if they're good enough? (pic attached) Dave, I know you said they should be under 60* earlier but this is with only one fan...not sure if that makes these temps acceptable or not.

If the cooling is still insufficient, I'm going to go with the liquid cooling and those quiet fans. It appears that there are very few air cooled options out there that address everything I'm looking for: 1) fit my G.Skill Ripsaw RAM (w/ heatspreaders are ~41mm tall) 2) solid temp performance 3) are quiet.

If the cooling is okay, I will proceed with the next steps...which I believe were running torture tests that involved the RAM.

Dave76 · 04 Jan 2012

Those temps are fine.
If you want to upgrade later, they will drop a bit further but, I wouldn't rush out and do it now.

Run the torture test and let us know the results.

jonnyb · 04 Jan 2012

Continuing with the one thing after another theme here, I failed the torture test after 4h5m (ran the 'Blend' test this time instead of the 'Small FFT'). Attached are snips from the thread that failed and the max temps during the torture test. I'm guessing the temps are okay, does this mean a RAM issue?

Dave76 · 05 Jan 2012

The temps are ok, further testing is needed, could be the RAM or CPU.

With your RAM, I would start there.

Take out half your RAM and run the same Prime95 Blend test.

This should let us know if the 24GB of RAM is putting stress on the CPU IMC (Integrated Memory Controller).
If it passes we can put the 12GB back in (24GB total) and adjust some of the settings.

jonnyb · 05 Jan 2012

Thanks Dave, I will do that tonight...two quick questions on it:

Should I change the BIOS voltages that we bumped up back to 'Auto' for this test?

Also, when I pull the RAM sticks out is there anything else that I need to do or is it as simple as pulling them out and restarting (and the change will be automatically detected)?

Dave76 · 05 Jan 2012

Leave the BIOS RAM voltage settings where they are, this will help the RAM stability and tell us if it needs adjusting.

Just take out the RAM, Leave the remaining RAM in slots 1,3 and 5.
(Counting slots from your CPU it will be slot 2,4, 6)
See you motherboard manual, page 16.
GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 2.0)

jonnyb · 05 Jan 2012

Gotcha, thanks. Will report back once testing is complete.