Can running too many PCs in one room cause hard crashes?

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 00:06

New build, consistantly rebooting :/

My friend just assembled a new PC for me... and its currently round his house where they have been trying to get it working properly.

Basically, after setting it all up, it wasnt working and the onboard sound was giving a ram beep error. Turns out I needed a new PSU so we ran down to the local comp shop and bought a 500W psu, instead of a 350 watt.

Now, hes saying mine and his system were both hard crashing, and said it could be cause they were drawing too much power from the room?

Can that be a reason for crashing?

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 12:19

My spec is

athlon venice 3800+ 64bit
Geforce 7300GS
1 gig of kingston pc3200 ram

DFI lanpartyUT RDX200

The power supply we bought from a local shop is just a generic 500 watt power supply...

Its STILL crashing, and its nothing to do with the power we think.

Sometimes it crashes before loading windows, other times during running windows.

any ideas?

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 12:27

Its a completely new install, everything new

btw, we ran memtest, it crashed after a while though... but had no errors up until the crash.

Currently running the computer with my mates ram in here... seeing how long it takes to crash... s ofar so good.

Downloading 3dmark to stress test it.

Does it matter if the PSU power lead has 20 pins when the motherboard takes 24?

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 12:33

we got 15 PCs in this house, lol

worried its the motherboard having the problem

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 12:33

oh,

are there any diagonistic software for this motherboard?

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 19:03

The computer has been running for several hours now without crash, currently downloading CS:S on steam so will leave it overnight and see if it stays up.

Using the cheap 500W PSU and my friends ram... we think the ram is the problem.

ArmyofHarmony · 22 Nov 2006 at 23:06

It now appears to be rebooting randomly :/

it's done 3 times now, each time i havent really been doing anything on the computer.

argh

ArmyofHarmony · 23 Nov 2006 at 00:12

Its not q-tec, just a random one you'd get a local computer shop

its rebooting every few minutes now... its taken several attempts just to type this post.

I now think the motherboard is the problem :/

You know, i really wanted to buy one of those ready built PCs that you get at any old shop that are cheap and not very good... but at least they definatly work (im currently computerless because my laptop broke)... i let my friends convince me into building one... but i always knew this would happen (i've built one before... and that had teething problems with memory at the start too).

ArmyofHarmony · 23 Nov 2006 at 00:29

No we didn't use one... i dont know why, built I kept quiet about it while they were building it (when i built one, i definatly used one... and definatly would again)

they've built a lot of PCs between them and never bother... but yeah i wasnt liking the way they were haphazardly leaving sticks of ram around and screwing the PSU in while the tower was upright etc

ffs what a hassle

BTW,

the computer was fine for about 4 hours, no reboots...earlier in the day
but since coming home its rebooted about 20 times... i cant understand why, i've installed a few bits of software like Winamp and mIRC and I'm sure those aren't to blame

ArmyofHarmony · 23 Nov 2006 at 09:40

Just took 5 attempts to boot into windows :/

ArmyofHarmony · 23 Nov 2006 at 17:03

thanks for your replies

We've decided that the motherboard is probably at fault. After reading several reviews of the mobo which seem to agree with my problems ive decided to get it exchanged for an Asus Mobo, which is actually cheaper due to not having firewire (not really essential, but would have been nice).