PC keeps shutting down

[MrTickle]

Hi Guys,
For the last few weeks my pc keeps shutting down or totally freezing but mainly shutting down. My temps are fine. CPU (athlon64 3200+) ranges from 37-43C even after playing 3 hours of BF2. My system temp hardly goes over 22C

My Gfx card is a Chaintech Apogee 6800 with unlocked pipelines. I also have an old Gf3 Ti200 which is in the comp at present. The fault still happens with this card albeit not as often so that rules out my 6800 Could be PSU

As for power supply I have a generic 550W which provides 11.712-11.840v on the +12v, 4.99 on the +5v, 3.392 on the +3v and 1.438 for the VCore. This psu is only a year old. I don't know if those results are any good!

I've taken a 512M stick of ram out leaving just 512M in. Since doing this I haven't crashed/froze/turned off for 3 hours so far. Both sticks of ram are crucial pc3200 and less than 5 months old. Tomorrow I'm getting 1G (2x512) Giel pc3200 ram. Would removing 1 stick of ram use less power?

I'm at my witts end I hope someone can shed some light on this for me.

Thanks in advance

System spec:-
Athlon64 3200+
Chaintech Apogee 6800 (unlocked pipelines)
Asus A8V Deluxe
2 x 80G Western Digital HD's
1G crucial pc3200, 1G Giel pc3200
SB Live 5.1 + LiveDrive2
Pioneer DVD+-R/RW
Samsung 40X CDRW
Winfast PVR tv card
550W PSU
2 x 80mm led fans.

BTW Tomorrow my bro is going to lend me a spare PSU to help rule it out hopefully It's only a 300W psu but never used. I think it will be ok for a couple of days for testing purposes won't it?

 

[nikebee]

perhaps the ram is faulty or has developed errors?
try running Memtest on it and see how that goes.

is this a new build? or an old build thats just started developing problems?

 

[MrTickle]

I built it no more than 6 months ago m8 but only just started 3 weeks ago.

Where can I get Memtest?

 

[Curio]

Almost certainly the PSU I would say. The voltages look OK, but it could still be faulty. The RAM is a possibility, but that usually causes resets or BSOD's. Complete power-offs are nearly always PSU.

EDIT: http://www.memtest86.com/

 

[MrTickle]

I forgot to mention I'm running win xp. Also I've put my 6800 back in and it hasn't switched off yet. Although I still have only 1 stick of 512M ram in.

So it could be :-
a) the other stick of 512M
b) the PSU
c) the mobo ?

Thanks Guys

 

[Larok]

see how you go with the new ram. Use the Geil on its own for a couple of days.

 

[MrTickle]

I've tested each stick one at a time with Memtest for 2 hours each and I get NO errors with them. I'm about to put my giel ram in now.

 

[Dutch Guy]

Just before my old PSU died it did that, freezing and restarting without a BSOD.

The fact that it happens less with a Ti200 also points to the PSU as a Ti200 uses less power so the chance of the PSU falling over are smaller.