Hello everyone !

I have a special demand to people willing to help me understand better how things work :)

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  • Context :

I got BSODs since about 2 months now, randomly (maybe every 10 days), always with the bug check 0x109 (CRITICAL_STRUCTURE_CORRUPTION), but the analysis is always inconclusive (showing “system” or ntoskrnl.exe as culprit, which is not interpretable). I already asked for help on other subs and the answer was always “the RAM is the culprit”. Since I felt insecure it could be something else and I would be disappointed new RAM would not be the solution (don’t ask why, newbie panick) I brought my PC to a technician who kept it for 2 weeks and in the end couldn’t help since it’s so random (memtest passed), he gave it back to me and told me “if it happens again, get new RAMs, if it still happen, then the Mobo is dead”.

I bought new sticks, I am waiting for them. But in the mean time, I want to understand better why people thinks it’s (almost) always the RAM. Why not the Mobo or CPU for example ?

Within this 2 weeks I learned a lot on the internet. But the synergy between CPU-RAM-Mobo is somehow still difficult for me to get.

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  • My question(s) :

For example, I got new symptoms this past week, windows is randomly not answering (for example starting steam within 3min after the boot freeze everything and my PC will not recover, or when I want to shut down, suddenly freezing on desktop). I say “freezing” because I can’t open any app and ALT+CTRL+DEL don’t do anything, but the apps icons react when I move the mouse over them, I just can’t open them and I have to force shut down the PC.

Now, in that case, why is the RAM the first culprit ? What is happening, or not happening ?

I like to get a picture of this synergy (correct me if I am wrong) : The Mobo is like a highway, it passes infos through all the component of the PC, the CPU is how wide the highway is, allowing more process to work at the same time, and the RAM is sorting the important ones, boosting the velocity as we need it. Correct ?

But then, what happens in my case ? The info is just not being treated by the RAM ? Or is it my Mobo just no giving the info to the RAM ? Or the CPU ? Why do the icons react but are not opening ?

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Feel free to talk to me like I am a child. I like to learn !

Thanks a lot to everyone !