MB, CPU, or PS What do you think is wrong?

[littleprince]

Stable system for several years.

Normally
2 Segate HD SATA in Raid 0 Cooled by 2 80mm fans at front
Asus _____ MB For the life of me can't remember model, will have to figure out tonight
2x1024MB sticks of RAM.
AMD Athlon 3200+ at stock speed cooled by a Scythe Infinity
ATI X1650 stock speed cooled by Zalman VF-900 VGA cooler.
PS is Antec ____ 2 fans, like 500 W or something like that if I recall.

Computer now freezes randomly, but basically after being on for maybe 30-50 seconds. Windows will either be stuck booting, or just finished booting or thereabouts. Keyboard frozen, USB dies, screen usually freezes. But my Samsung CRT sometimes says signal out of range, and gives some awfully weird hz numbers.

I switched to an older HD on IDE, same symptoms, freezes maybe a little later. So shouldn't be the HD, or the SATA connections.

Swapped Vid card, same problems. Removed 1 stick of ram at a time, same time.

So I think the only things are left with MB, CPU, PS of which I don't have spares to check. Anyone else experience this before?

 

[robisbell]

PSU. get a multimeter and manually test it with and without a load.

 

[littleprince]

Thanks robisbell,
Picked up a spare one and will try that out.

I was thinking it might not be the PSU, because with my ATI DV Tuner out, both DVD drives out, and 1 old 5400rpm HD instead of the 2 SATA, and my old radeon 7200 I thought I'd be drawing a lot less power, but I guess it could have problems supplying good voltage regardless of the load

 

[biomanz]

Check the mobo's capacitors to see if any are bulging or leaking. Would help to rule it out more certainly.

 

[littleprince]

No gd with swapped PS.
I wonder if its the CPU

 

[Ausm]

Make sure the CPU is not overheating by checking the heatsink to make sure it is clean and seated properly. If the CPU is cooling properly I would lean toward getting another CPU.

Ausm

 

[littleprince]

Thanks Ausm,

Yup, gotta pick up some new AS. Will remove CPU tonight, clean, re-seat and see how it goes.
If it still doesn't work, kinda sucks, because I don't have a spare socket 939 cpu or mb to test with.
So might just have to guess and pick one up, and hope I guess right.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: littleprince
Thanks Ausm,

Yup, gotta pick up some new AS. Will remove CPU tonight, clean, re-seat and see how it goes.
If it still doesn't work, kinda sucks, because I don't have a spare socket 939 cpu or mb to test with.
So might just have to guess and pick one up, and hope I guess right.

No prob hope you get the problem fixed.

 

[robisbell]

swapping a PSU is not testing the original PSU, since no testing was done, the original PSU is likely bad and as such, damaged the mobo, cpu, ram, gpu, etc..

 

[littleprince]

Not really wanting to buy a PSU tester.
Anyways, reseated CPU and heatsink twice no go.

Ordered new MB/RAM/CPU/PSU for a new budget E8500 build I'll put together. I've had a 8800GTS OC lying around for a few months, so it'll go in that. RAM, Vid Card from this rig will be donated to GF's comp.
Thx guys!

 

[robisbell]

a MULTIMETER, that's what you will need, and some common sense.

 

[Soundmanred]

Originally posted by: robisbell
a MULTIMETER, that's what you will need, and some common sense.

Wow, still insulting people.
Surprise!

 

[littleprince]

Haha. Ok robisbell.
Common sense?
1. Never heard of a power supply going bad and damaging all other components in a computer.
2. If it somehow did happen, what point would there be in testing the PS? There would be 2 possibilities. It's fine, in which case I still need a CPU/MB which I've already determined, or its bad, and its damaged the CPU/MB and I still need new ones which I've already determined. There is no possibility that it's bad and the CPU/MB is fine since I already tested with a different PS.

So thanks for your great amazing help!