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I am at a loss at this point and am in need of help from you guys. I decided to do a little overclocking with my PC. I have overclocked this PC before and am not new to it. I have successfully overclocked to 5GHz with my setup though I don’t keep it at that speed. Anyways, during the overclock my PC locked up and blue screened (which it has done before) since then I have defaulted the BIOS and I am still getting the stop 124 error which is supposed to be a hardware failure. This problem didn’t arise until the overclock so I am inclined to think my hardware is fine. I have tried everything except replace parts. I tried to reload Windows but I cannot even do that because it will blue screen during install every time. I also tried to install on another hard drive and that blue screened as well. Now I have an expensive PC that doesn’t work. I checked my temps in BIOS and they are just fine, my setup is plenty cool. Any ideas?

Things I have tried:
Every combination of RAM in slots (haven’t tried different RAM yet)
Defaulting BIOS
Clearing CMOS
Re-flashing BIOS (on the latest version)
Manually increasing CPU voltage (up to 1.38v)
Reloading Windows (tried more than one hard drive)

Setup:
2600K w/water cooling
Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen3
1600MHz RAM DDR3 (XMP)

Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks for the help.

Sounds like you damaged something. Try a different CPU.

I assume you were only raising the CPU multiplier?

did some googlin and it appears your Vcore is too low, raise it up a notch

Yes, I just raised the multiplier.

gmskking wrote:

I am at a loss at this point and am in need of help from you guys. I decided to do a little overclocking with my PC. I have overclocked this PC before and am not new to it. I have successfully overclocked to 5GHz with my setup though I don’t keep it at that speed. Anyways, during the overclock my PC locked up and blue screened (which it has done before) since then I have defaulted the BIOS and I am still getting the stop 124 error which is supposed to be a hardware failure. This problem didn’t arise until the overclock so I am inclined to think my hardware is fine. I have tried everything except replace parts. I tried to reload Windows but I cannot even do that because it will blue screen during install every time. I also tried to install on another hard drive and that blue screened as well. Now I have an expensive PC that doesn’t work. I checked my temps in BIOS and they are just fine, my setup is plenty cool. Any ideas?

Things I have tried:
Every combination of RAM in slots (haven’t tried different RAM yet)
Defaulting BIOS
Clearing CMOS
Re-flashing BIOS (on the latest version)
Manually increasing CPU voltage (up to 1.38v)
Reloading Windows (tried more than one hard drive)

Setup:
2600K w/water cooling
Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen3
1600MHz RAM DDR3 (XMP)

Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks for the help.

124 is classic (for me) memory controller failure. this happened to me on 2 systesm. Intel i750 after adding two additional stick os ram and frying the onboard memory controller. And this occurs when i bump my thubanx6 over 4ghz..

now, the rub will be the memory may pass memtest... but what you need is prime95 and the mixed mode test to verify. (mixed mode for ram and cpu test). decrease the memory speed until it stops occurring.

my 2c ..

gmskking wrote:

This problem didn’t arise until the overclock so I am inclined to think my hardware is fine.

I think your logic is flawed here - if you overclocked, and it stopped working, then the hardware may very well not be fine any more.

I cannot run any tests because I cannot load Windows. I thought the problem might of been with the hard drive so I formatted and now I cannot reload.

absurdity wrote:

gmskking wrote:

This problem didn’t arise until the overclock so I am inclined to think my hardware is fine.

I think your logic is flawed here - if you overclocked, and it stopped working, then the hardware may very well not be fine any more.

I just don't want to admit it to myself but I am starting to think that too. Just not sure which part is failing or how to check.

Start replacing parts one at a time until it works... if you replace something and it still doesn't work, put the original part back in and replace something else. Start with the CPU and RAM.

If you don't have spare parts you could take it to a local PC repair shop and have them fix it.

homerdog wrote:

Start replacing parts one at a time until it works... if you replace something and it still doesn't work, put the original part back in and replace something else. Start with the CPU and RAM.

If you don't have spare parts you could take it to a local PC repair shop and have them fix it.

I understand that. Trying to avoid buying a new setup which is what I will have to do to figure out which part it is. What do you guys guess it is? Motherboard probably. You think CPU is good?

gmskking wrote:

homerdog wrote:

Start replacing parts one at a time until it works... if you replace something and it still doesn't work, put the original part back in and replace something else. Start with the CPU and RAM.

If you don't have spare parts you could take it to a local PC repair shop and have them fix it.

I understand that. Trying to avoid buying a new setup which is what I will have to do to figure out which part it is. What do you guys guess it is? Motherboard probably. You think CPU is good?

Sadly no. I am about 9)% sure the cpu is done. try the ram in another system.. thats about all you can do. this is not a mobo issue of any kind this is purely a cpu issue. new video cards, drives and or mobo will not resolve this one.

out of curiosity .. did you have all 4 memory slots full ?

Sometimes BIOSes will not default to sane settings when the CMOS is cleared. One example of this is memory timings/voltage/clock (excessively high memory clock could cause what you're experiencing). It's a lot to cover but try to give it a once over to see if you can spot anything weird.

maxxcool wrote:

gmskking wrote:

homerdog wrote:

Start replacing parts one at a time until it works... if you replace something and it still doesn't work, put the original part back in and replace something else. Start with the CPU and RAM.

If you don't have spare parts you could take it to a local PC repair shop and have them fix it.

I understand that. Trying to avoid buying a new setup which is what I will have to do to figure out which part it is. What do you guys guess it is? Motherboard probably. You think CPU is good?

Sadly no. I am about 9)% sure the cpu is done. try the ram in another system.. thats about all you can do. this is not a mobo issue of any kind this is purely a cpu issue. new video cards, drives and or mobo will not resolve this one.

out of curiosity .. did you have all 4 memory slots full ?

Two 4GB sticks. Only two slots used.

I will do some more testing tonight. Hopefully I can determine for sure the cause. CPU is the last thing I wanted to replace. We shall see.

Do Intel processors come with a 3 year warranty? If so, my processor is still under warranty. Chances I could get it replaced through Intel?

You can certainly try. I've never had a CPU go bad (it's a very rare thing) so I dunno how good they are about that.

On another note. I just got around to opening a really nice Z77 mobo for a system I'm building for a cousin, and some of the CPU pins/pads are bent. The board won't even POST, and Asus wants $120 to fix it because they think I broke it. Never buying Asus again..

Well, I think I may have figured out what it was and you probably won't believe it. So I have been trying to load Windows again with a CD and it would always get about half way through copying files and either blue screen or just stop and hang. So I figured, what the heck, I will try and install using a USB stick instead. I also figured why not completely remove the CD-ROM from the equation. I unplugged the CD-ROM and attempted to load Windows via USB. Windows loaded perfectly. No blue screens yet! It was my f*cking CD-ROM drive! I couldn't believe it. I was almost ready to order new motherboard and CPU. Its luck that I even thought of unplugging the CD-ROM. It is worth noting that overclocking and CD-ROM have NOTHING to do with one another (at least in my mind they don't) so I never thought in a million years it was CD-ROM. Talk about horrible timing. I am not sure if this is good luck or bad or both.

So the original Windows install is working fine now? Or just the installer?

Kougar wrote:

So the original Windows install is working fine now? Or just the installer?

I erased the original install because I thought the hard drive was causing error. Could not reinstall Windows due to the CD-ROM being defective. Found that out when I tried USB and it installed just fine. With CD-ROM unplugged PC has been working great. Even overclocked to 4.8GHz with no problems. Just a weird situation. CD-ROM gave out when I was benching at 5GHz. Bad timing.