Got a strange one, wondering if my 13700K processor is cooked?

[XEXE]

Before I start throwing allegations at ASUS or Intel, I want to try and sort this out.

For about a month or so now, I have noticed that sometimes my computer will "hitch" when dragging windows, opening/closing things and so on. Sometimes it would take abnormally long to start, lag in the BIOS of all things and just seem sluggish. These events were always brief though and rare, so never really thought much of it.

Then last week I though to recheck drivers/firmware for my motherboard and visited Asus' website, only to also see there was a new BIOS revision and the whole Intel baseline debacle. So I updated and turned off the Asus MCE(Multi core enhancement) as I want to use my PC for at least a decade, and while I have never had a processor die on me, wanted to extend its longevity. This did not solve the weird issues I was having though.

The past few days though have been a disaster. It's gotten worse. I experience weird lag spikes in doing simple things, such as typing in Word. Then I tried playing a game I have played for hours and kept getting unity.dll errors when writing/accessing system memory, and the game hard crashing, which it had never done before. I thought maybe it was the game, reinstall did nothing. I thought maybe it's my GPU drivers, DDU and reinstall, same issue. Looked up the specific crash online and saw others mention it and that it was only that game crashing for them as well. Very few solutions. But what made my hair stand up was one user mentioned that they had to RMA their CPU, before the crashing stopped. I thought "No way, that's soooo rare for a CPU to die".

Back into the BIOS I went, disabled even XMP. Game kept crashing, serious micro stuttering. Restarted the PC. Windows crashed as soon as I logged in, no BSOD, just frozen entirely. Held the power button and reset, went into the BIOS, thinking "Why would disabling XMP make things worse?" So again, back into the BIOS and set it back to XMP. Moved the mouse to click "Save and exit", screen went black before I even clicked on anything. The fans spun at max for a moment, and the computer reset. back into BIOS, enabled XMP, saved and exited. Was finally able to boot to the desktop as normal. Checked event viewer and all I have is "Critical Event 1, WHEA error". Then a gorillion of the unity.dll errors of course.

I have:

1. Ran Intel diagnostic tool: No errors

2. Set baseline standards for everything in the BIOS

3. Re-enabled XMP

4. GPU drivers reinstalled via DDU

5. Not added or changed any hardware in the system

6. All storage drives report healthy and good

7. SFC and DISM both report no issues with Windows itself

8. Reinstalled the game

9. Full system memory check: Passed with no errors
10. Full VRAM memory check of GPU with OCCT: Passed with no errors

Bruh. Is my CPU actually unstable because it was running at whatever Asus' MCE was doing? I know what you might be thinking, "Well why don't you re-enable MCE and see if it's "stable" then?". Well, I'm typing this right now and will try that after. But I guess the crux of the issue is that it should be stable *without* MCE being enabled. Anything else I can try?

Here is the error file for the game as Windows did not create a dump:
https://files.catbox.moe/9hkof8.7z

Edit: Now I got a "System Thread Exception Not Handled" error, and this time Windows did create a minidump: https://files.catbox.moe/4vqw4n.7z

Edit: Another memory dump just now "Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap": https://files.catbox.moe/yhgg27.zip

-------------------------------------------------------
OS Name Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name Nix
System Manufacturer ASUS
System Model System Product Name
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU SKU
Processor 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700K, 3400 Mhz, 16 Core(s), 24 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 2202, 2024-04-17
SMBIOS Version 3.5
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
BaseBoard Product ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO
BaseBoard Version Rev 1.xx
Platform Role Desktop
Secure Boot State On
PCR7 Configuration Elevation Required to View
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.22621.2506"
User Name Nix\0
Time Zone Canada Central Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 96.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 95.7 GB
Available Physical Memory 82.0 GB
Total Virtual Memory 102 GB
Available Virtual Memory 82.4 GB
Page File Space 6.25 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
Kernel DMA Protection On
Virtualization-based security Running
Virtualization-based security Required Security Properties
Virtualization-based security Available Security Properties Base Virtualization Support, Secure Boot, DMA Protection, UEFI Code Readonly, SMM Security Mitigations 1.0, Mode Based Execution Control, APIC Virtualization
Virtualization-based security Services Configured Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity
Virtualization-based security Services Running Hypervisor enforced Code Integrity
Windows Defender Application Control policy Enforced
Windows Defender Application Control user mode policy Off
Device Encryption Support Elevation Required to View
A hypervisor has been detected. Features required for Hyper-V will not be displayed.
Name NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_2204&SUBSYS_87B31043&REV_A1\4&256A0AA8&0&0008
Adapter Type NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090, NVIDIA compatible
Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
Adapter RAM (1,048,576) bytes
Installed Drivers C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_84b2c943d6816eb7\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_84b2c943d6816eb7\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_84b2c943d6816eb7\nvldumdx.dll,C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispi.inf_amd64_84b2c943d6816eb7\nvldumdx.dll
Driver Version 31.0.15.5222
INF File oem102.inf (Section071 section)
Color Planes Not Available
Color Table Entries 4294967296
Resolution 3840 x 2160 x 160 hertz
Bits/Pixel 32
Memory Address 0x76000000-0x76FFFFFF
Memory Address 0x0000-0x1FFFFFF
I/O Port 0x00007000-0x0000707F
IRQ Channel IRQ 4294967255
Driver C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERSTORE\FILEREPOSITORY\NV_DISPI.INF_AMD64_84B2C943D6816EB7\NVLDDMKM.SYS (31.0.15.5222, 57.30 MB (60,078,728 bytes), 2024-04-16 19:43)

[ACarmona_Intel]

Hello XEXE,

Thank you for posting in our communities.

Please check your email inbox, as we have sent you a message regarding our concern.

Thank you, and have a great day ahead!

Best regards,

Carmona A.

Intel Customer Support Technician