New System Very Unstable

[pipes990]

My new build is all together but I can't get it to run stable. I even set the bios settings to the ultra safe mode and it still only ran prime95 for about 30sec before freezing. Any suggestions? Here is the system:

Thermaltake 500W
Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4
Phenom II 955
OCZ 1333 7-7-7-20 Platinum
Galaxy 96GGF6HMFEXX GeForce 9600 GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR3
OCZ Vertex 30GB SSD
Win7
1tb F3 HDD (Not installed yet, still coming)

I know that is a crappy power supply but I got it brand new for free. Could that be the problem?

 

[jsc]

Which Prime95 test is failing - small fft's, large fft's, or blend? Failing small fft's tend to point to the CPU. The other two tend to point to the memory.

Download and run memtest86+ to eliminate memory problems.

Try to borrow a known good PSU to eliminate power supply problems.

 

[requiemsallure]

+1 jsc

i would bet it is a memory problem as well.

looked up power supply to the best of my ability, i found only two, and they both appear to be just fine, but its always possible so

another +1 jsc (try to borrow a known good PSU)

also i have located your ram as well, and it seems that other people (mostly with AMD systems as well) have had problems with the same type of thing, and they fixed it by setting the RAM to 1066Mhz

 

[cscott_it]

Did you make sure that everything was getting the correct amount of power in the BIOS?

I find that memory will more often than not be auto-detected at up to .15v less than what it's rated at, which has been known to cause stability problems.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

looked up power supply to the best of my ability, i found only two, and they both appear to be just fine, but its always possible so

Newegg carries two Thermaltake 500W PSU's and they're both very low end units.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=Thermaltake+500W&x=0&y=0

1. Neither one have active PFC (that's very bad)

2. Neither one is 80+ certified. In fact, they both have very low efficiency ratings. The first one is only 70% and the second is only 72%.

3. They don't put out much power on the 12v rail where it's needed. The first one is horrible (+3.3V@22A,+5V@32A,+12V1@14A,+12V2@15A), the second one isn't as bad, but still not good (+3.3V@24A,+5V@15A,+12V1@25A,+12V2@18A).

 

[requiemsallure]

i didnt really look into them that much