Random reboots, WHEA-logger Event ID 18 and 20

[bnt]

Hello

I hope you guys can help me fix this. Sorry for the long story but I want you to know everything that happened.

So a couple of months ago I custom build a new pc. Everything went fine, no problems during the build and no problems installing all the programs I needed. Then after a about 3 weeks my pc rebooted without warning while playing a game. I had no idea what happened. After that it kept happening when I played games, sometime after hours of playing and sometimes within a minute. Then it started happening when I was browsing the internet or checking my mails...

I did some research and used prime95 to see if there was a problem with my cpu, I ran it for about 4 hours without any problems.
Next I tried testing my GPU (because it happened mostly while playing games). I used Furmark for about 3 hours, also without any problems.
Last I tested the RAM. I used memtest 86+ also for about 3 hours, and you guest it, without any problems.

I had no idea what was going on.
The holiday season started and I want home, took my pc with me. when i got home I opened him up and redid my cable management, so it wasn't all over the place. I installed my pc at home and fired it up. A day went by without reboots, that day became weeks... I thought the problem was fixed! (I thought : maybe there was a loose cable that caused the reboots)

I totally forgot about the problem since it never happened anymore. Then I got a corsair H60 for Christmas, I installed it and everything worked perfect. Silent and super cool. (idle around 6-10°C and under load around 35-40 °C) So I thought: With the cpu running so cool, maybe I can overclock it. So I did (using AMD Overdrive). I want form 3.9GHz to 4.2GHz and then I did a stability test. within 2 of the test the pc rebooted. The moment after I logged back in it rebooted again. This kept happening. So I want into the bios and set the speed and voltage back to normal. I logged in, made sure everything was beck to normal in AMD OverDrive and then uninstalled it! (this was last week)

Everything seemed to be working like normal. Until today, I was watching movie and all of the sodden it rebooted. I logged back in ans started the movie again, after about 30min it rebooted again. And it happend a 3rd time.

I did some more googling and I came across this forum. I hope someone here will be able to help me.


In the Event Viewer I find the same errors coming back every time i get a reboot :

WHEA-logger Event ID 18
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Bus/Interconnect Error
Processor ID: 4

The details view of this entry contains further information.


WHEA-logger Event ID 20
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Component: AMD Northbridge
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Sync Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.

I also attached the minidups from today.

I really hope you can help me. Tell me if you need more information.

 

[YoYo155]

Hi bnt welcome to SF .

Sudden restarts such as these are usually an electrical issue meaning the PSU
is the main culprit in this regard.
Just noting, your motherboard isn't really built for overclocking, your CPU's stock wattage is 125W
which is your motherboard's maximum rated capacity.
Have you done so for any prolonged amount of time?

What is the make, model and age of your PSU?
Fill out this form and post back the result:

• Power Supply Calculator

Now for the bugchecks they are a generic BUS error but the WHEA logger event somewhat helps
in narrowing it down a bit.

Error Type    : BUS error
Operation     : Generic

===============================================================================
Section 2     : x86/x64 MCA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Descriptor    @ fffffa800736da08
Section       @ fffffa800736db90
Offset        : 664
Length        : 264
Flags         : 0x00000000
Severity      : Fatal

Error         : BUSLG_OBS_ERR_*_NOTIMEOUT_ERR (Proc 0 Bank 4)
  Status      : 0xba00001000020c0f

Event[3609]:
  Log Name: System
  Source: Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger
  Date: 2013-10-27T17:58:02.439
  Event ID: 20
  Task: N/A
  Level: Error
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: N/A
  User: S-1-5-19
  User Name: NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE
  Computer: StijnB-PC
  Description: 
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Component: [COLOR=Red][U]AMD Northbridge[/U][/COLOR]
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: Sync Error
Processor ID: 0

The details view of this entry contains further information.

Event[3610]:
  Log Name: System
  Source: Microsoft-Windows-WHEA-Logger
  Date: 2013-10-27T17:58:02.455
  Event ID: 18
  Task: N/A
  Level: Error
  Opcode: Info
  Keyword: N/A
  User: S-1-5-19
  User Name: NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE
  Computer: StijnB-PC
  Description: 
A fatal hardware error has occurred.

Reported by component: Processor Core
Error Source: Machine Check Exception
Error Type: [COLOR=Red][U]Bus/Interconnect Error[/U][/COLOR]
Processor ID: 4

The details view of this entry contains further information.

The notation of the northbridge along with the consistent BUS error makes me think
about the GPU PCI-Express, try using the integrated graphics and assess the situation,
if it still reboots randomly look into trying a different PSU.

Let us know the results.

 

[bnt]

Hi YoYo155

Thanks for your response!

Just noting, your motherboard isn't really built for overclocking, your CPU's stock wattage is 125W
which is your motherboard's maximum rated capacity.
Have you done so for any prolonged amount of time?

No, I did the stability test right after I did the overclock and set it back to normal right after the reboot.


As for the PSU (I forgot to add this in my first post). I used that calculator to to see what wattage I needed, the recommended wattage was 425W so I got a CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 450W.
After the problems started someone suggested to get a PSU with higher wattage, because it is recommended to have 100W more than suggested by the calculator.
So now I have a Corsair CX Series Modular CX600M PSU. I've got this PSU for about 2 months now.
So the new PSU didn't help.


I've also notices that the reboots that happened today only occurred when I was watching movies. I played some games (for about an hour and a half) to see if my pc would reboot, but nothing happened. Than i got back to the movie and about 20min in it rebooted again. Maybe it is a coincidence?


I'll use the integrated graphics now and see what happens.

 

[bnt]

So, I have been using the integrated graphics today and tried to recreate the same setting as yesterday (playing high resolution movies and some stuff running in the background).

I did not have any reboots. This and the fact that the PSU is brand new and 150W more than recommended makes me think that the PSU is not causing the problem.

So it must be the PCI, right ?
Is there a way to be sure it's the PSI and not the GPU ? What should my next step be ? I want to be sure, before I send something back.

 

[YoYo155]

Hi .

It might be a defective card, can you borrow one and use it for a couple of days?
Before considering a faulty PCI-e / motherboard?

 

[bnt]

Hello.

I don't really know of someone who could lend me a GPU, I'll ask around tho.

 

[bnt]

Sorry for the long absence.

I recently (2 months ago) made build a new pc (one for at home) and used the GPU from then build (MSI 750Ti) to see if the problem continued.. and it did. I keep getting reboots with the same error even with another GPU. So now i'm sure the motherboard if the problem. So I've send back the motherboard to where I got it from (luckily I still have warranty). Thanks for the help!



I'm using the new build for now. But...it seems my problems are not over.
Everything worked fine at first. Then, you guessed it, reboots... this time it only happened when I played games. But when a reboot happened it was like the pc was having trouble starting back up, it would say of for 30 sec then start up and after 10 sec shut back down.. and then restarting ans shutting back down...
There was also no information in the event viewer, only "The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first."

I had no idea what was going on. Then I found a little reset switch on the GPU, I used the switch powered the pc back on and everything worked fine again. I thought that the PCI from the first motherboard maybe corrupted the GPU or something. Anyway the problem was fixed, so I thought.

yesterday I had two BSOD's. the fist one while checking my e-mails : got a bsod before the pc rebooted this was the bugcheck: 0x0000003d. I didn't have the time to look in to it at the time. the second bsod happened about 2h later. also a bsod before the pc rebooted. this time the bugcheck was: 0xa0000001. this happened while playing a game. After this event I unchecked "Automatically restart" in the "Startup and Recovery" settings. But nothing happened for the rest of the day.

Today I was playing another game and sometimes (two times) the game froze for a second and the sound went away. Event viewer gave an application error, saying: "Windows cannot access the file..." So i thought maybe this is the reason for the reboots? But then later after restarting the game and playing for a while the pc just rebooted without a bsod and nothing in the Event viewer again. But this time the pc did not have trouble starting back up (like the fist time a month ago).

So I started to think about the things I've recently changed to the pc. And recently I've added the two RAM sticks from the first build(the one with the bad motherboard). So I took those two sticks out, hoping it would fix the problems. But that didn't help.

So now I don't really know what to do anymore. I'm hope someone here could take a look at the log file and maybe help me find the problem.

new pc specs:
motherboard : MSI B85M-E45
CPU : Intel Core i5 4570 / 3.2 GHz
RAM : Crucial Ballistix Sport 2x4GB
GPU : Radeon HD 7950
Hard Drives : 1 x Kingston SSD 120 GB 1 x 1TB HDD 1 x 320 GB HDD