Struggling with A620 Asrock a620m-hdv/m.2+

Built a little mATX gaming pc with this motherboard. Ryzen 9 7900x3d (was on sale!). For the time being the plan was to use an old Geforce 1070 Ti GPU, since I play mostly 1080p anyways.

However, if I install the drivers for the GPU, I get BSOD "SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED", and the computer reboots. Upon reboot, it goes straight into the same BSOD before login screen.

The RAM is also problematic, but thats another issue... I can run the computer with only one chip, otherwise it wont boot.

I used to be experienced in building computers, but thats a long time ago. I am a bit outdated, but I know the basics.

Anyone please?

Thanks for the reply!

I tried what you said, but no luck. The whole system feels very unstable. I get weird messages when trying to install drivers and essential software in Windows 10. Some things work well, but for instance AMD drivers fail to install, and also .NET fails to install.

Sometimes the computer boots, but fails just after Asrock screen, and reboots in an infinite loop. I've found that I can fix this by simply booting with an original Windows 10 USB installation stick, and just reboot once I come into the installation meny (essentially doing nothing else than booting with it). Then the computer boots fine into Windows 10 again.

I have tried a long list of things:

- Complete memcheck of each DDR5 ram sticks (no errors reported).
- Tried two different GPUs (GeForce leads to the error described in the previous post, if I attempt installing updated drivers, while my older AMD GPU fails most of the time, but I made it work for a few hours last night, even playing some games successfully. However now, Windows reports error 43 for the AMD GPU in the Device Manager).
- Tried installing fresh Windows on SSD SATA disk (Samsung Evo) and an SSD NVME/M.2 (Crucial P3 1TB). Same result, same instability, same BSOD infinite loop if attempting to install Nvidia drivers.
- Tried all kinds of updates; BIOS (now 2.08), chipset, other AMD and Asrock updates of all sorts
- Tried running single channel RAM, and tried running both. I first through this helped, but I think it doesn't really matter. Same core instability regardless.
- Tried removing and refitting most hardware except CPU and CPU-fan, cause that would require new thermal paste (which I don't have right now)

I am basically out of ideas.

Thanks again. I appreciate it a lot. Feeling less alone in the frustration.

So, does this mean that you made your computer work in the end?

I actually got some thermal paste from a friend of mine and I have just refitted all the parts. Pins looked flawless to me. I have been very careful.

Do you remember exactly how much you loosened up the cooler? I have water cooling too (Arctic Liquid Freeze III 240). The instructions just tells me to turn the screw around until it stops. It feels very natural to stop just there, because suddenly it just *stops*. I was naive enough to think this was a great design.

Do you remember if you had specifically the SYSTEM THREAD EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED error when install the GPU? Which GPU do you have?

Update from here. Now the system works flawlessly, and I got the newest Nvidia drivers. It turned out to be two issues at once:

1. The main issue (the one causing system thread exception not handled) was a software issue. I used an original Windows 10 USB stick with a genuine product key. It tuned out, however, that this Windows 10 version was so old that it did not in fact update to the newest versions. I should have noticed this much earlier, but I was fixated on hardware issues. It did download a tons of updates following installation, but I assumed that it failed to give me the option to upgrade to Windows 11 due to a hardware error.

I downloaded a fresh Windows 10 installation from Microsoft, and then everything worked flawlessly (well, almost). Geforce drivers are happy and from last week. System is stable. Temps good. Stress tests and benchmarks good. I will finally do some gaming once the children are in bed :-D

2. There is still a RAM issue. If I insert both RAM chips, the machine fails to boot. CPU and RAM lights are lit. If I run only one RAM chip, it boots fine. Then again, 16 gb of RAM is enough for now. Since both RAM chips passed the memtest86 test, I am guessing the MB is to blame. Maybe the RAM slots? Regardless, I will try to claim something under the warranty.

Thanks for the help! Have nice weekend.