Occasional BSODs during everyday use

smiles86 said:

As far as I am aware, the CPU did not come overclocked by factory setting (it was Intel OEM), nor have I done any sort of conscious overclocking on it. From what I understand however, the stock CPU cooler that Intel provides is "garbage", so I might invest in a better one. However, given that temperatures barely go over ~40 C during regular use such as web browsing, and only peak at ~60 C during light gaming, would CPU overheating be the cause of my BSODs?

*Edit: Ok, so should I leave Prime95 or should I keep on testing beyond 2 minutes, assuming the temperature will only keep rising?

Based on your "regular use" temps I doubt the CPU will be causing any issues. I would not bother with Prime until if and when you get a better cooler, it is very tough on things.

Have you gone into the bios and set the memory speed/timings and voltage? That can be very important. Have a look at the CPU settings in the bios too, to see the speed and voltage that is set to.

I must admit I am not very good with BSOD but in my limited knowledge if it's hardware related it's usually down to speed, timings or voltage.

Do you have CPUz installed? It might be an idea to run that, then just run prime for a few seconds and capture a screenshot of the CPU speed and voltage under load.

Smiles86, I would recommend you not run Prime95 until you get a better cooler. Your TJmax (the temp at which the computer begins to shut itself down to minimize damage) is 100C. You had 1 core at 91C after only 2 minutes. That is too close for that short of a time. Also, You should not have had artifacts after only 3 minutes of Furmark. That indicates a problem with your GPU or the GPU drivers. What version are you running and do you know how to install graphics drivers? It needs to be done right to avoid problems. Arc has a very good explanation of exactly how it should be done. Please go to Nvidia and check the driver version that is current and see if it matches what you have installed. You will want the most current WHQL driver.

I had uninstalled the Nvidia drivers and installed the 314.22 one following the steps Arc provided. Should I instead be installing the most recent one for my card (Nvidia's site says 331.82) instead of 314.22, which Arc recommended?

I was most likely using 331.82 before since I had automatic updates enabled, but Furmark was run with 314.22. I will give the test a go again with 314.22 and let you know how it goes. Just to be sure, the artifacts I should be looking for are pixels that don't look like they fit in? I was seeing little bits of white once in a while during the test.

*Edit: Just ran Furmark again and right from the very beginning I am seeing little bits of white. I assume these are artifacts. I will hold off on updating drivers to the most recent (331.82) until otherwise advised.
*Edit2: The little bits of white flicker, but consistently appear in the same location.

smiles86 said:

Here are the results from the steps Arc suggested.

• PSU supplies almost double the supposed required wattage.
• Nvidia drivers uninstalled and cleaned. 314.22WHQL installed.
• SSD drivers up to date.
• Memtest86 ran overnight for ~10 hours (8 complete passes) without a single error.
• Furmark ran for ~3 minutes before artifacts began appearing. Test was stopped at that point, but GPU temps were still rising very slowly.
• Prime95 ran for ~2 minutes without any errors. CPU temps reached ~90 C.

*Edit: Furmark was run after Prime95. Disregard the ~90 C max temp values for CPU, as those are from Prime95 and not from Furmark.

In my experience if artifacts are appearing it is down to 1 of 2 things, either not enough voltage or too much speed for the voltage.
In either case it should not be happening to you with a factory overclocked GPU. If you have not messed with it yourself then it should run just fine. You should not need to lower the clock speed or raise the voltage yourself, the whole point of a factory OC card is they take the work out of it for you and you pay extra for it.

My recommendation would be to RMA the card.