Power problem?

[306maxi]

Got a bit of a power problem with my PC. But it's a strange one.

Specs

K8N Neo4-F
AMD 64 3000+
512mb ddr 400 generic crap
X300 128
Antec NeoHE 550W

Now for the problem. PC intermittently has difficulty powering on. We had power problems about 4 months ago which may have something to do with it but I honestly can't be sure. This morning I switched the PC off before I went to work and when my g/f came home it just wouldn't power on. When I came home it wouldn't power up. Unplugged it and left it for a while and plugged it back in and it's switched on but was hanging at the boot screen. Powered it off and on and it botted up fine. But it's done this a few times. Sometimes it also powers down while it's switched on and then refuses to power back up again. Performance is also quite flakey as well. It used to run Vista fine. But I did another install of Vista 6000 build and it's running like crap on Vista so I have to boot up on my XP disk because Vista just keeps on crashing.

I'm lucky in that I've got another PSU to test it but it's so intermittent that I will not know if it's sorted or not if I swap the PSU out and if I do I'm going to have to put it into another case as the other PSU I have has short cables. So I want to avoid having to take everything out of one case and put it into another if I can avoid it.

So what do people think? Is it a PSU fault or a motherboad issue? It's got me licked! PSU is certainly under warranty but as for the mobo I'm not sure what MSI's warranty policy is in the UK but it's only about 18 months old. If it's the mobo I may try to convince my g/f to go part of the way with me and buy a cheapish 965/E6300 system if the mobo is to be away for a while.

 

[306maxi]

Sounds like it could be either. Suprised to see that you tried running Vista with only 512mb of RAM. I think the most likely problem is the motherboard. It'll be hard to trouble shoot that without another motherboard. Then again i've also seen similar issues where it turned out to be the RAM at fault. You may want to run Memtest to see if the RAM checks out.

not that I disagree but does anyone else have an opinion? I'm going to swap out the PSU this weekend and see if it keeps on doing this. Unfortunately I don't have a motherboard or RAM to test it out with either. Will have to run memtest on the weekend

512mb of RAM, a 3000+ and a 128mb X300 and Vista? You'd be surprised how well it works. You honestly would! It's my g/f's PC and she's a teacher so all she wants it for is word processing, publisher, excel and browsing the net and it is more than able to do that with Vista and Aeroglass turned on