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

When an application places heavy demands on system resources, particularly RAM, faulty memory modules can produce uncorrectable errors that cause Windows to issue a BSOD to prevent data corruption. Memory failures are a leading cause of BSODs and are often intermittent, appearing only when specific addresses or high-utilization patterns are stressed. Running a memory diagnostic tool such as Windows Memory Diagnostic or MemTest86 is the standard first step in this scenario.

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

A RAID controller failure generally manifests as disk array degradation or I/O failures, not as a crash specifically correlated with high application resource usage.

CPU failures can cause crashes but are far less common than memory failures and typically produce different symptoms such as thermal shutdowns or arithmetic errors rather than resource-load-triggered BSODs.