PC Powers off - Running out of options during fresh rebuild

Hi guys,,

First post on here, so nice to meet you all..

I am currently building my fourth PC in the third's existing case. The reason for this is that the previous one kept powering off during Windows.

There seemed nothing to be done software-wise, so I went for the upgrade. Last weekend installed this system (keeping my existing drives, PSU, HDDs, case and fans):

ASUS M2NPV-VM mobo
Castor LoDDR2-512MB x 2
GeForce 7600 GS video card
AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPU

Cleaned the case and fans of dust and tried to fresh install XP. No joy.. the PC powers off halfway through the blue screens. Tried the memory in all slots individually and together. Still no luck.

So, I reasoned that the PSU was the next most likely candidate for change and went out and bought the 500W Silent King 5 (winner of BCN award 2006). Still no joy. PC powers off during the 'loading files' or sometimes slightly later.

Finally, got a new HDD (Hitachi Deskstar 120GB). Popped that in and still no luck.

Tried other OS disks but they all have the same problem.

By now, the only thing that I have not changed is the case. It would really save the hassle of going out and changing that if someone on here had any bright ideas. Could something in the case cause this to happen? I have ripped the case apart this evening and removed any remainder of dust.. Tearing my hair out here.....

any help truly appreciated.. thanks

Klikity

Like the poster above me said, make sure you are putting on your heatsink fan properly, tightened etc.

I once had a similar situation, blue screen during windows install. It turned out to be a defective memory card. Things would be ok until windows addressed the defective memory address. Run memtest to check that out. Alternatively, try running with 512 only, and using different memory slots.

If the HFS does not fix it I would look at the ram.

If you have 2 sticks try just one, if it crashes try the second piece. I've had bad ram before and it will drive you nuts. If it boots, do some Prime95 tortue test. If there is a problem it will show up. Make sure you adjust the ram size to fit your setup. Make sure you have your temp monitors up. If it good for 4 hr, your odds are good it solid. Some like 24hr test. personally I found 4 hr will catch 99% of the problems.