A server repeatedly crashes with a BSOD when running an application that uses a high amount of system recourses. Which of the following hardware components MOST likely needs to be checked by a…

RAM is directly involved in every memory allocation made by a high-resource application, so faulty memory modules are placed under maximum stress during such workloads. A defective DIMM can produce parity errors, uncorrectable bit flips, or unstable voltage behavior that corrupt kernel data structures, triggering a STOP error (BSOD). Memory issues are the most common hardware cause of repeatable BSODs under load and can be confirmed with tools like Windows Memory Diagnostic or MemTest86.

A failing hard drive typically causes disk I/O errors, file corruption, or slow performance rather than a BSOD triggered specifically by high CPU and memory resource usage.

A RAID controller failure would manifest as disk read/write errors or array degradation, not as a BSOD correlated with high application resource consumption.

While an overheating or failed CPU can cause crashes, CPU failures are far less common than RAM failures and typically produce thermal shutdowns or different error codes rather than resource-load-triggered BSODs.