Occasional bluescreens (Suspect RAM/CPU & XMP)

[virtuo]

Running Win 7 Pro 64bit on 2x4Gb Corsair dominator Platinum 2133Mhz. Asus Gryphon Z87, i5 4670k

I'm finding my system will blusecreen occasionally when I do some heavier multi-tasking (10+Chrome tabs, compressing large binary files in WinRar and Downloading something on Steam, for example. Nothing horribly intense, just lots going on at once.

I thought it might have been a duff RAM stick, but I've run Memtest86 on them overnight with no errors and gave the system a 60 minute beating in Prime95 before the temperatures got a little too toasty. The RAM usage gets to around 4-6GB. I've updated the BIOS and chipset drivers to the latest versions and Windows update reports nothing but language packs to download. The system runs quite lean, with no unnecessary processes or services running in the background.

Was thinking about it at work this morning and the only thing that might be an issue is the XMP profile destabilising the RAM. I'm very new to overclocking etc. and have just stuck the motherboard to the "ASUS Optimised" high performance setting in the BIOS. Is this a likely candidate for blue screens?

I've read something about XMP not giving the RAM enough voltage and to manually increase it, is that a safe thing to do? Is it worth disabling XMP completely and setting my own voltages/settings etc?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Intel lists 1600MHZ RAM as the maximum supported type:

http://ark.intel.com/products/75048/...up-to-3_80-GHz

Anything above that means you are overclocking the memory controller.

[Morthawt]

If I were you, track down the cause of the BSOD using a free program called WhoCrashed: http://www.resplendence.com/whocrashed

If your hardware testing and benchmarking are looking ok, I would assume it is a driver problem. It happened to me recently with a ramdrive software I use, so I ended up stopping using it since It was not really a high priority tool for me any way and my BSOD's stopped. That program should tell you the name of the driver or general cause of the BSOD. It might help you figure it out.

[virtuo]

I'll have a look at WhoCrashed this evening, thanks for the tip.

I did disable the XMP profile in the BIOS, so RAM is running at 1600 and haven't had a hiccup since I posted this thread, so it's certainly overclocking related. I'll keep tweaking and tinkering, see what I can get away with

[ganster]

i had the same issue with my system different ram mine mas marked as 1600 since i lowered it to 1333 iv not had any issues for well over a year now i dont do any overclocking myself
lowering the ram like you have done will prob solve your issue
if you are doing overclocking on the cpu it can also drop the voltage to the ram so you have to keep an eye on it