Corsair ST100: years of random BSODS likely culprit

Make no mistake, I didn't think it was possible for a headphone stand to have said effect on a system, which is why it's been "years of" issues. I have always had regularly random BSODs with my system from a certain point in time. It's an aging motherboard, modded for some new tech, so there is expected to be some discomfort at times. Growing pains, if you will. I will be upgrading soon, but this machine is still fast and responsive, as a result of tweaking and tweaking the tweaks for many years. And the board is a very solid board for its age.

Anyways, on to the problem, and efforts I've given (also randomly and sporadically as life doesn't make such investigations a smooth process) in trying to assess the factors responsible for every sort of random crash, or make system adjustments to fix it.

So, I have flashed the mobo bios with mods, and updated on board chip firmware, I have laced through the BIOS changing different settings, I have ran diagnostic tests on everything. I have solid quality components, and I have always built my own rigs, as well as building custom gaming rigs for others. I repair cell phones, tablets, electronics, etc so I have enough experience to be able to assess issues, and over time I can usually narrow things down to the heart of the issue. There has always been the thought in the back of my mind that the headset stand was a possible factor, but I didn't think that by being plugged in and not used for anything but holding up my headphones and displaying synced RGB lighting, that it would cause regular crashes. And I mean on every OS I've tried from every release of Windows since I received the stand, which have been many because after several BSODs, my solution is to start fresh and pay attention to when the BSODs start kicking in, and draw similarities until they point somewhere vague or specific. Also several Linux gui distros, ubuntu debian and arch based. Modified versions of Windows, as well. But the issue being so random and sporadic but regular, that I knew they were coming, yet no regularity so as to indicate anything specific... EXCEPT the times for whatever reason I had the headphone stand unplugged, and I would think everything was going great and decide to make sure everything was plugged in and working, and oh.. the stand right let's plug it in and get it set up too. Then usually not immediately, but still soon enough that thinking back I could start to see a peripheral timing association with the stand being plugged in.. but still stubbornly believed it wouldn't have that effect. Especially since the BSODs occurred at times when there were no obvious functions involving the stand going on - wasn't plugging or unplugging anything into the usb ports - in fact, it never happened when I was doing those things. The only thing is that I noticed there was a difference in functions between the usb port on the top near the upright base, and the one on the right side of the base. Almost as if one functioned as USB2.0 and the other as USB3.1 despite the fact they are both blue, which should indicate USB3.0/3.1 functionality.

I did however, end up thoroughly checking the hub it was sometimes plugged into, thinking it was the hub and not the stand. lol yep. Anyways, this last install of 20H1 crashed on me a few times and I finally decided (who knows what finally triggers us to jump off that cliff, after standing on the edge of it looking down for so long - idk ask Freud) that the stand might be the issue and I needed to finally try specifically testing. Well I have had it unplugged for several days, and no issues with my system, no glitchy things happening, no random slower than normal boots, and NO BSODs... so far. Hopefully I don't get a red herring BSOD, and end up getting thrown off the stand focus, although this thread might assist in keeping from that possible eventuality.

Ultimately, I'd like to see if anyone else might have similar issues. I couldn't find many in relation to this in a search, and the times I did, the user seemed to feel it was other issue with the stand, like the USB ports on the stand causing the BSODs, and I mean the 2 extra ports, not the main power port for the stand - which is a possibility. Anyways, I wanted to give my specifics and see if it triggered anyone else's memory or realizations of past or present experiences with the ST100 stand.

Perhaps I can get some confirmation, or a nudge in a different direction, but still related to the stand, as I am positive that is the device causing the issues. And answering why would be the ultimate goal, although with computer tech - many why's go unanswered as an accepted loss.

In any event, hopefully I can get some help here, or better yet help others. Thanks for the interest, and my most sympathetic apologies for the length of the... meandering type of explanation. Hopefully it was somewhat clear.

Dude! Thank you for making this post! I just made an account here to reply to you. I ONLY have one iCue compatible device... the HS100. And I was having frequent but not too often to be disabling BSOD issues. However they just randomly went away. I don't even remember how I stumbled upon this thread, but reading it I realized that I changed my setup around and I could no longer plug in the HS100 to my PC. And so I tried plugging the HS100 in again and within a few hours, I got a BSOD.

As a software engineer, I find it hilarious that a headphone stand can crash Windows.

Insane that I found this post... I haven't been able to get my keyboard to work for months now in the bios. I couldn't even get into my bios without having to go through the right click start while holding shift. I was looking into this issue. I unplugged the headset stand, and magically I was able to get into bios. I also had other random issues that have stopped since I unplugged it! I felt crazy thinking it was a freaking headset stand lmao. Thank you! 

I've posted a workaround here.