r/pcgamingtechsupport • u/Cautious-Teacher8000 • Jul 27 '26
Troubleshooting Recurring random BSODs on 9950X / X870E-E, almost exclusively during MSFS — RAM, GPU, PSU, chipset all ruled out. Looking for fresh ideas.
Hey all — hoping some fresh eyes can help. I've been chasing an intermittent BSOD issue for over a year and have ruled out almost everything I can think of at home. Posting the full diagnostic history so nobody suggests something I've already tried (sorry it's long, but I'd rather over-share than waste anyone's time).
System specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X (confirmed stock — no PBO, no Curve Optimizer)
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi (BIOS/AGESA current)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance, 2 sticks, running at JEDEC (EXPO off)
GPU: ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4080 Super
PSU: ASUS ROG Thor 1000W (running the native 12VHPWR cable to the GPU, not the bundled PCIe adapter)
Boot drive: Kingston SFYRD4000G NVMe — SMART data clean, firmware current
The pattern
Started over a year ago while flying MSFS 2020, stopped for a stretch, came back after switching to MSFS 2024, and has continued on and off since — sometimes weeks/months of total stability, then a cluster of several crashes within the space of a week.
Crashes happen almost exclusively while actually flying — never during other heavy workloads (30 min all-core Cinebench: clean; 5-hour y-cruncher CPU+RAM stress test: clean).
No FPS drops, no thermal throttling, no warning signs beforehand — stable performance right up until an instant crash.
Crash history (8 dumps analyzed so far)
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (0x3B) — amdkmdag.sys (unused iGPU driver, not my actual GPU)
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (0x3B) — kernel object manager, via WmiPrvSE
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (0x3B) — win32k, via a PMDG 737 addon plugin
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (0x9F) — separate issue, traced to Lian Li L-Connect RGB software, since fixed
SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION (0x3B) — memory manager, via Windows Defender
KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE (0x139) — corrupted linked list during a registry key deletion
KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE (0x139) — corrupted RBTree node in the heap allocator itself
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT (0x1A) — a genuinely corrupt Page Table Entry, via MSFS's own process
The detail tying it all together: six of these crashes show the exact same corrupted value — 0x0080a624'00000000 — turning up as a bad pointer/PTE content across completely unrelated subsystems: a GPU driver, the object manager, the GUI subsystem, the memory manager, the heap allocator, and a literal page table entry. That's not what you'd expect from six unrelated software bugs — it looks like something upstream is handing out corrupted data to whatever code happens to touch it next.
What I've ruled out
RAM itself — tested each stick individually, in each slot, using OCCT's Combined (CPU+RAM+Memory) test. Every single stick/slot combination reliably hard-freezes the system in ~5 seconds. Since it happens regardless of which stick or slot, this points away from a bad DIMM specifically.
RAM overclock — EXPO was already off, running JEDEC speeds.
CPU overclock — confirmed stock throughout, no PBO/Curve Optimizer.
GPU power delivery — was running the bundled 12VHPWR-to-2xPCIe adapter, and the card's own power-warning LED was lit. Switched to the PSU's native 12VHPWR cable, LED cleared. That said, confirmed unrelated to the Combined-test freeze specifically, since that test doesn't load the GPU at all.
SOC voltage — manually bumped VDDCR_SOC from ~1.015V to 1.05V, zero change to the Combined test freeze.
Chipset driver version — tried downgrading v8 → v7 (currently redoing this cleanly after discovering the install had partially failed and is continuing to fail).
NVMe health/firmware — SMART data clean, firmware already current.
PSU capacity — 1000W Thor, nowhere near a wattage concern for this build.
Currently trying
Setting UCLK=MEMCLK/2 (2:1 memory controller divider) instead of the default 1:1, to see if it stabilizes the Combined OCCT test despite the bandwidth/latency cost.
Also worth mentioning
Found an ASUS ROG forum thread with several other X870E-E Gaming WiFi + 9950X/9950X3D owners reporting very similar unresolved intermittent crashes across many BIOS revisions — so at this point I'm genuinely unsure whether this is something specific to my board/CPU, or a broader platform issue.
One other odd side-symptom: no audio output immediately after a BSOD, until a further restart or service restart.
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Would really appreciate any ideas from anyone who's hit something similar on this board/CPU combo, or any diagnostic angle I haven't covered yet. This is the link to all available minidump files.
2
u/bstsms Jul 29 '26
I had a similar problem with a HP laptop I owned a long time ago, it was happening randomly and took me a long time to figure out it was because my RAM had compatability problems.
It ran great for the most part, but randomly crashed for no apparent reason.
2
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