Help! Random BSOD on GA-Z77-D3H

[tfboy]

This is a strange and very frustrating problems.
System is composed of:
- GA-Z77-D3H v1 motherboard
- i5 3570K running at stock speeds/voltages
- 4x 4GB Crucial PC3-12800 sticks of RAM at standard SPD speeds
- Geforce GTX560 Ti graphics

This is anonying in that at some point after my first boot of the day, the system will give me a BSOD and reboot. It happens at random times, sometimes when I log into Windows (running W7 Ultimate 64bit), after x minutes of operation, when ejecting a DVD from the drive.

Errors vary from problem with ACPI.sys (90% of the time) to other errors like irql_not_less_or_equal. This will happen with the system at idle, no loads on CPU or RAM or GPU. It happens whether I'm running on the Intel HD4000 or discrete GTX560. It happens regardless of RAM usage.

However, once I've had the BSOD, when it reboots, it's fine. I can work all day long without any problem. 

I wondered if it's related to a "cold boot" where something doesn't initialise properly, but I don't think it's that because if I cold boot then reboot, I can still get the BSOD after the second boot.

Basically, my system is prone to giving me a BSOD at some point. I cannot seem to prevent it or provoke it. Once it's happened, it's fine.

I've tried a multitude of unitary tests: high load CPU tests, RAM tests, etc, and everything is fine.

I've already tried changing the PSU from a decent quality 600W to a Corsair 800W unit, so it's not that (and it BSODs when load is really low, drawing something like 60W).

I've also tried multiple revisions of BIOS - now running F22, but doesn't seem to make any difference.

So I'm wondering if my board is faulty - it's the revision 1 and I see there have been more recent versions of the board. As it's only 18 months old, it's still under warranty, but before I take it up, I wondered if you can offer any suggestions to try before I send it back.

Thanks.

[AndyM]

I am no expert and see you have tried all the obvious things.  I have exactly the same board, version1, same memory and cpu.  I have no graphics card.  I am running Windows 8.1 64 bit pro and I have never had a BOSD or any stability problems.  So in my opinion the board assuming it isn't faulty, is a reliable board.

I assume you have updated all divers?  I see you have tried on-board graphics, have you tried pulling out the graphics card?  Have you run sfc to check the system files?

Andrew

[tfboy]

Hi Andrew,

I'm pretty sure I tried with onboard only - will be worth checking again just to be sure.

I have done clean installations of the OS and have the issue immediately, no matter which driver versions I use.

I haven't yet tried removing all the RAM sticks and trying them one at a time. Are you using all four slots on your board?

Thanks for the suggestions

edit: before, I was using two SSDs on the SATA3 ports striped together with the onboard Intel RAID. When I was running that, I was very often getting BSODs referencing the intel driver ichstore or something like that.

Since reinstalling the OS, I've been using AHCI and come to think of it, it's now BSODing on AHCI. Maybe it's a storage subsystem issue? I've tried different SSDs too - before my RAID setup was with two M4 drives. Now I'm running an OCZ Vector SSD on its own.

[AndyM]

No, I only use two memory slots with 8gig sticks in each one.  I am using the latest beta BIOS, 23B UEFI, but I noticed that some earlier BIOS mention compatibility and stability issues.  I can't remember the number of my previous BIOS, but it was stable.  I have two 2TB HDs configured as a RAID mirror with a 32gig mini SSD (also Crucial) as a cache.  I do not overclock and as said have never experienced stability problems.  The only bug I have found so far is if I enable CPU Fan Fail warning in BIOS, the buzzer I have fitted goes mad on the occasional boot up.  I have not used Windows 7 on my machine.  It's certainly worth trying the RAM one or two at a time.

Have you tried submitting a ticket for Gigabyte technical support?

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Andrew