micro-atx intel mobo: your pick?

Luck100

I'm building a htpc/gaming/plex living room pc, but it looks like the MSI motherboard I bought is defective. It blue screens or locks up on any youtube videos in Chrome. Any suggestions for a replacement? Not MSI please . No overclocking or SLI needed.

It MUST have an spdif output connector for DD/DTS pass-through to my receiver (no hdmi connections on the receiver). Theoretically my case can take full ATX mobos, but it will be tight at best.

Parts that I have now:

MSI H97M-G43 motherboard
Silverstone GD09 case
Intel I5-4690
Seasonic G550 psu
2 x 4 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3-1600
Noctua NH-L12 cpu cooler
GTX 670 (from previous build)
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240 GB SSD (from previous build)
WD Green 3 TB Hard Drive (from previous build)
Panasonic bluray drive

Wcool

About those crashes: I had something similar with the AMD version of that motherboard. Both linux and windows 8.1 crashed on it, but normally only after a few minutes.

It looked like a heat related problem and adding a fan to the North Bridge made it crash less frequent.

I was about to buy a new motherboard but in a moment of luck I messed around with the BIOS and whatever I did, the problem has NEVER reoccurred.

Now for the bad news, I don't know exactly what I changed but I have a 2 strong suspicions:
1) Don't switch on ECO mode or anything related to running internet updates from the BIOS
2) Switch off legacy USB and windows 8.1 specific stuff

Good luck!

Luck100

Interesting. I've only tried running the BIOS with default settings for the most part. Downclocked the RAM to see if that would help (didn't). I want to try disabling the integrated graphics, but I couldn't find any settings in the BIOS to do that. I think Windows 8.1 stuff is disabled by default. I'll try shutting off the legacy USB tonight.

Edit: and ECO mode, I think it's shut off but I'll try that too.

Luck100

Did lots more testing last night. Tried many BIOS options. Reinstalled Win 7 from scratch, tested repeatedly as I installed drivers and updates. Blue screen code x0000124 every time with youtube videos in Chrome.

I'm pretty sure either my mobo or CPU must have a hardware fault. Everything else is ruled out (hardware and software). How do I figure out which one it is?

cherryghost

What tests have you done?

Luck100

cherryghost wrote: »

What tests have you done?

See below (copied from my post on another forum)
http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/354944-new-build-stop-0x124-bsod-motherboard-cpu-fault.html

I'm getting 0x124 BSOD regularly on a new self-built machine. I think I've ruled out all possibilities except for the motherboard or CPU. My question: is there any way to figure out which one it is? Unfortunately I don't have a suitable spare mobo or CPU that I can cross-test with.


The gory details:
It's a new build and I get 0x124 BSOD every time I play youtube videos in Chrome, and it happens within a few seconds of starting playback. Internet explorer is fine on the same videos. I've also gotten a couple of 0x124's playing videos in Plex, but it takes much longer and doesn't happen at all sometimes. Haven't seen BSOD in any other cases, but I haven't tried much else since it's a new build that crashes.

What I've tried (and nothing worked):
1. Re-install Win 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 (direct from MSDN iso download). Before connecting to internet, I turn off all updates. Then install latest ethernet drivers (from MSI website for my mobo), and download Chrome. I get BSOD playing youtube video in Chrome, with literally nothing else installed other than Windows and network drivers.
2. Run windows update and install all the newest drivers (again from MSI website for my mobo) and newest NVidia WHQL driver for my graphics card. Still BSOD.
3. Remove graphics card and run with integrated graphics (HD4600).
4. Ran memtest86 to completion on all tests, no errors.
5. The SSD and graphics card were taken from another Windows 7 x64 PC which runs perfectly (and has been running for 2 years) without any such BSOD. Seems unlikely they are the source of the problem.
6 . Ran intel burntest, core temps just peaked at 80C after 10 iterations.
7. Ran in safe mode with networking - this is the only case where I don't get BSOD playing youtube videos in Chrome.
8. Nothing is overclocked.
9. BIOS is reset to optimized defaults.
10. Flashed BIOS to latest version (2.7)

Wcool

Ok just to be sure that my issue is related: I didn't specifically have it at a certain reproducible moment in time, however it did seem to be related to an increase of use of the graphics card. And of course my board has a different chipset, however the BIOS probably has similar features

Everytime i crashed my board, the North Bridge was extremely hot. Since the BIOS modification it is not. You could check that for your board any of the main components, capacitors, etc are very hot.

But as you seem to have it always at the same point, I think it might be software related. especially the fact that when you disable the graphics card driver, it seems to work.

So what I would do is:
1) run the test in Internet Explorer and/or Firefox. -> if it does not crash, Chrome is the problem
2) Uninstall Flash, used by Youtube, and load an older or newer version from Adobe -> Flash problem
2) download a different version of the graphics card driver for your card, either the MS provided one or some older or newer version of the NVIDIA driver -> MSI version of NVIDIA driver is the problem
3) deinstall graphics driver (completely, not just registry) + remove the graphics card, load the intel drivers and see if it happens on the intel built in graphics card -> either graphics card and/or driver is wrong for the card.

And did you also load all the mother board drivers from MSI? ie the Devices window in Control Panel does not have any question marks?

Luck100

I've already tried removing the graphics card and using integrated video and it made no difference. Number 3 in my list above. I tried it both with default (MS) driver and latest HD4600 driver. I also tried running the GTX 670 with MS default driver, as well as NVidia WHQL drivers 340.52 and 344.75 (latest version). In all these cases I got BSOD or lockup in the exact same youtube/Chrome case.

I have several other Windows x64 machines, all up to date and none of them ever blue screen in youtube/Chrome. So if the hardware is operating properly in this new build it should not blue screen either.

Wcool

Well then I am running out of suggestions.

When you ran the test on Intel integrated video, did you remove the NVIDIA drivers first? Sometimes relics of the other software GPU driver interfere?

Is it crashing when you run dxdiag?

cherryghost

I assume you installed chipset drivers (I see no mention of it so no harm asking)?

Luck100

cherryghost wrote: »

I assume you installed chipset drivers (I see no mention of it so no harm asking)?

yes, downloaded from MSI website.