I7-14700KF Games Crashing

[Kadriel]

Greetings, I have an extremely weird crashing issue. Sorry this is long but I wanted to list out everything I've tried.

Hardware:

I7-14700KF

Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Master X (ver 1.1) , running latest BIOS

EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 Ultra

64GB Corsair Titanium DDR5 6600

Samsung 990 Pro 1TB (running OS)

WD sn850x 4TB (running the games)

Win 11 Pro

I have multiple games crashing and sometimes a BSOD in Windows 11. This is not a game issue. Separately from what I'm about to describe, despite knowing how and have done it often... I am unable to install Mint/Ubuntu Linux on this system. I get multiple errors and the setup fails.

Total War Troy is my game test of choice as it is extremely delicate and any instability crashes it as soon as it loads the campaign map.

This is the error:

Faulting module name: troy.exe, version: 1.7.0.0, time stamp: 0x63bc1211
Exception code: 0xc0000005

Which is Application Error 0xc0000005 (Access Violation)

I run sfc /scannow and get this:

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

Temps on CPU/GPU are low/normal when the crashes occur.

I tried swapping out the RAM to single out the problem to a stick of memory, I tried it with single sticks of memory (both), tried different slots (A2/B2 when single testing as the mobo manual says). Same results.

Here's the weird part.

If I run a Prime95 stress test.... then everything on my system runs perfectly (minus the system slowing down a little). Prime95 shows zero errors. Said another way, if the system is under a heavy load, then no random windows BSOD and games run perfectly.

I have replicated this over a dozen times.

Prime95 running = working

No Prime95 = not working

If I try to play without Prime95 running, Troy crashes right away. Occasionally it will let me enter a battle, where it then randomly crashes soon after.

If I have Prime95 running, it runs perfectly. I can play for hours w/o a crash. It ran for 4 hours today.

If I have Prime95 running, its runs perfectly, but if I stop Prime95 then the game crashes right away.

Running the game after Prime95 is stopped reverts back to the game instantly crashing.

I play Eve Online, and run 8 accounts/clients. My game clients randomly crash w/ no errors. Prime95 fixes it on this too.

[RamyerM_Intel]

Hello Kadriel, 

Thank you for a detailed description. Before we conduct some troubleshooting, would you please share with us your SSU logs? I just want to be more familiar with your configuration. You may download it at this link: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/18377/intel-system-support-utility-for-windows.html. Additionally, are there other games affected aside from Eve Online? 

Ramyer M. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Kadriel]

I replaced the CPU and the problem went away.

[RamyerM_Intel]

Hello Kadriel, 

We appreciate you updating us on the actions you've taken. It's unfortunate that you had to replace the CPU but we are glad that the issue no longer appears. With the replacement complete, we will now close this case. Should you require any additional support in the future, please don't hesitate to post a new question as this thread will no longer be monitored.

Ramyer M. 

Intel Customer Support Technician