Arch Linux

ttheodor

Member

Registered: 2013-12-29

Posts: 31

System crashes repeatedly[Solved]

I recently had my old desktop shipped to me.

Specs:
i7 950
Gigabyte X58A-UDR3
18G Ram (3x2 + 3x4)
GTX970
SSD Samsung 840EVO
Three more HDDs
PSU Corsair GS800

There was one Arch installation on it (on the SSD) and one Win 8.1 (on one of
the HDDs). The GPU was upgraded (from a 5870) and I added 12 more gigs of ram.

The Win 8.1 OS worked fine (I exclusively used it for gaming). On the other
hand Arch didn't:

Almost every time the system would crash at random moments. Not a shutdown, no
kernel panic, they were instant power downs (as if the power cord was
unplugged). I had a similar problem about a year ago but it went away (I don't
remember if/who I fixed it).

After fiddling for a while I decided to freshly install Arch. In the first week
I had two such crashed. But as time passed the crashed became more frequent to
the point that I can crash the system almost always.

I did some tests and here are my findings:

1) Memtest was run for hours with no errors.
2) I don't think it's a GPU/PSU/overheating problem since I used the PC for
multi-hour long gaming sessions with no problems.

Here's the interesting part:
3) If I run 'du /' then almost certainly the system will crash. Also dd-ing the
drive to /dev/null has the same effect.
But if I boot through a live USB and mount the filesystems and du everything
works normally (dd causes no problems as well).

4) I tried searching in journalctl but I found nothing (maybe I didn't use the
appropriate flags).

5) I tried the libata.force=noncq flag and yesterday twice the system seemed
stable: I run in an infinite loop 'sudo du /' and it just worked; but after a
restart it broke again.

6) I tried plugging the SSD in a different controller on the mobo with a
different cable but nothing changed.

Any ideas?

Last edited by ttheodor (2015-07-28 19:37:10)

ttheodor

Member

Registered: 2013-12-29

Posts: 31

Re: System crashes repeatedly[Solved]

The solution was to bump up the northbridge voltage. It seems that with newer GPUs the default voltage setting is not enough.

hrobeers

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2008-11-05

Posts: 79

Re: System crashes repeatedly[Solved]

Hi ttheodor,

Do you have a good resource explaining how to change the voltage?
I can't seem to find it for my Celeron N2940

Thanks,
Hans

ttheodor

Member

Registered: 2013-12-29

Posts: 31

Re: System crashes repeatedly[Solved]

I did it through the motherboard's bios menu.

Last edited by ttheodor (2015-07-29 15:27:21)