Doozy of a crashing issue, 0x124 and other?

First off, I'm sorry if this isn't the best place for this thread, but it seemed the most logical place to ask for help since I don't currently have a BSOD log. Here's my situation:

Recently rebuilt my PC, piece by piece over a couple months until I had all new parts. Initially went with an ASRock Z75 Pro3 motherboard, Intel i5-3550, 16GB of Crucual Ballistix Tactical DDR3(2x8GB), and a Seagate Hybrid 2TB+8GB SSHD (plus 4 other standard HDDs). Almost immediately I had crashing issues. Sometimes it would be a BSOD, sometimes just hard freeze that would require holding the power button until kill. When BSOD came up, it almost always showed 0x124 code. At first I thought it was related to OC/voltages, so I set everything to stock, then spent almost two months fiddling with voltages in BIOS. Nothing seemed to have any real effect. I double checked all my drivers/firmware, too. Crashes were randomish - they happened eventually no matter what I was doing, sometimes at the Windows loading screen (before the four dots formed the windows logo, almost always while they were in a line), sometimes 5 hours in, and I can't seem to find any reliable trigger for them except that certain games would cause a crash within 5-15 minutes every time. Prime95, HeavyLoad, etc. do not cause crashes even running for several hours. Removed all peripheral devices and cards, ran video from integrated graphics, no change. Also monitored voltages and temperatures both under load and idle, nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, even when it was OC'd, processor never got above 36C using a Hyper 212 Plus with Arctic Silver 5.

First suspect: Hybrid drive. Lots of reviews said something screwy was going on with the drive, causing blue screens and crashing, so I swapped it with my older Samsung Spinpoint F3, installed a fresh copy of Win7, and had the same thing happen, though I got a few different BSOD codes along with the 0x124. I don't remember what they were, I didn't write them down, but there were maybe 3 different ones I saw, all hardware related. Just to be sure I then swapped to an old WD Caviar with WinXP, same thing. I then booted from a USB drive with Ubuntu Linux, hard freeze after about 20 minutes.

Second Suspect: RAM. Tested each stick 10+ hours with memtest86, then both together. Not a single fault found in over 30 total hours of testing.

Third suspect: Cheap motherboard. Bought a new Asus P8Z77-V, installed, same issues, no changes. I figure the chances of two separate motherboards from different manufacturers and performance tiers having the exact same issue is pretty small.

Fourth suspect: Power supply. Just yesterday replaced old unit with Corsair AX760. Ran great for all of an hour, then same thing.

I'm at the end of my wits and my budget here, and the only two things I haven't replaced or otherwise omitted are the CPU and the RAM. I don't have any other compatible stuff to test with, either. I know the chances of a CPU being a bum are pretty slim, and usually if they are bad, they don't work at all. So the RAM seems a more likely culprit, but I'm confused as to why there were no errors thrown up from memtest86 over 30 hours, when on average I'm crashing every 30-40 minutes. With the holidays coming up, I can afford either a new processor (looking at the i5-3570k) or new ram, and I'd prefer not to have built two whole computers in the past 4 months, even though I'm most of the way there already... Otherwise I'll have to wait until well after the new year. Please help!


Edit: worth mentioning - since I replaced the PS yesterday, I haven't had a bluescreen, only hard freezing. But it's only been a day.

Well i believe what you have is possibly a bad cpu. The reason I say that is I got a bsod myself a few months back; that brought up the same 0x124 code. When i posted it on here; most of the experts on bsod's said it seemed to point to a faulty cpu. So, with that said; i contacted intel(fortunately it was still in the warranty period). Explained to them, the situation; they sent me a replacement; installed the replacement; and ever since then have not had a lick of trouble or problem with my system. I would venture to bet that it is your cpu. If it is still under the warranty period; i would contact Intel and explain to them the situation and hopefully they will replace it for you.

thedude22 said:

Thanks for the reply! I was kind of leaning towards this myself. I don't have any of the original stuff from when I got the processor, how would I know if it's still under warranty?

Well; how long has it been since you bought the processor? From what i can recall; the box that my processor and cpu fan came in says there is a 3-year warranty on the cpu. So if you can recall when you bought it they may help you out. But then again I am not positive that they will do a replacement for you because you said you dont have anything from when you bought it; and generally they need some sorta proof of when it was bought before they will consider replacement. I know i had a bit of a haggling session with Intel because they wanted me to shell out 200 bucks as a deposit before they would consider sending me a replacement. It was either that or send them my bad cpu first and then they would send me the replacement but i had to haggle with them over the fact that I would be without a computer and i need my system for personal and business reasons. But finally they gave in and just sent it to me without charging me.

thedude22 said:

I bought it in June, from an online retailer. It was an oem package, no box or fan or anything.

I would go back to that retailer if you can recall the name of the company and explain to them the situation and that you would like for it to replaced because you have a bad cpu.