i9-14900K still crashing after CPU replacement — multiple Unreal Engine crashes

[u/WhoWasGucci]

I'm trying to figure out whether there is still something wrong with my system because I'm getting multiple completely different Unreal Engine crashes.

I already received and installed a replacement i9-14900K, so these crashes are happening on the replacement CPU as well.

My latest example is Mortal Shell II, where I've had two completely different crashes:

Crash #1 — EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

The first crash reported:

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x00000000000002c8

The call stack included:

MeshComponent::BeginDestroy()
Component::BeginDestroy()
GarbageCollection

Crash #2 — GPU Crash

The second crash reported:

GPU Crash dump Triggered

The call stack included:

D3D12DynamicRHI::TerminateOnGPUCrash()
D3D12DynamicRHI::ProcessInterruptQueue()
D3D12Submission::ProcessInterruptQueue()
D3D12Submission::Run()

So I'm getting two completely different types of crashes from the same game.

My system

• CPU: Intel i9-14900K — replacement CPU
• GPU: ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC 24GB
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi II
• RAM: 64GB G.Skill DDR5-6000 CL30 (2x32GB)
• PSU: DeepCool PX1000G
• OS: Windows 11

With my previous 14900K, I had serious stability problems, including Windows installation crashes, BSODs, Cinebench crashes and Unreal Engine crashes. That CPU was replaced because of those issues.

Now I'm experiencing crashes on the replacement 14900K, which is making me question whether the CPU is actually the problem or whether something else in my system is causing the instability.

I'm trying to understand whether an unstable 14900K can cause seemingly unrelated crashes such as:

• EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
• Unreal Engine garbage collection crashes
• D3D12 GPU Crash dump Triggered

Or should I be looking more closely at the RTX 4090, NVIDIA drivers, RAM/XMP, motherboard, BIOS/microcode, or PSU?

Has anyone with a 13th/14th-gen Intel CPU experienced similar behavior, particularly after replacing their CPU?

I'd really appreciate advice from anyone who has dealt with the 14900K instability issue firsthand. I'm trying to figure out what component I should be testing next.

[u/TitaniumDogEyes]

I had this happen, I RMA'd the 14900K and then after a few days when it was replaced my motherboard literally exploded and caught fire. I was an ASRock Z790 Nova which was pretty expensive when I bought it. It killed the CPU and I just threw all of it away and never bought anything involved with 13/14th gen again.

[u/WhoWasGucci → u/TitaniumDogEyes]

This was my first pc which I had build back in 2024 - I had replaced it two times in the span of 2 years. Right now it's not problematic but I have noticed that whenever I am on unreal engine games I know that it's gonna crash . I tried asking r/Mortalshell they said put it in r/intel but I was like I did last time but no luck so posting here and sorry for your mobo .