constant lockups...any advice?

[normllikeme 0]

alright...i just put together a new system...gigabyte k8nsc (nforce 3 chipset fyi) w/ athlon 64 3200 90nm...vid card is a radeon 9600pro 256mb and ram is ocz gold series 3200 5-2-2-2 2.8v...little raid setup backup drive, dvd, burner, etc...400w thermaltake powersupply

 

now what happens is the computer will be runnin sweet right? but then i try to do even the least intensive game or something similiar and it locks up or reboots or vpu error(that i know is the pos radeon)...so im thinkin power supply...got a 520w antec on the way...and vid card sucks...geforce 6600gt on the way though...just makin sure i got my bases covered....

 

also my ram is only runnin at 2.75..board seems to max out here...but i laxed some hidden type timings on the ram and its stable through any simple memory test...but once i involve the video card in anything..crash city...so it could be just the vid card also....

 

....any ideas? got everything i might need for the fix ya think?

[badnewz 0]

have you checked for any BIOS updates for that mobo ?

[normllikeme 0]

ya i got the latest one...F5 bios

[wizard8873 8]

What you should do is find a program that can test your hardware. It may be power or it may be overheating. Go to the HDD manufacturers website and download their program and test your harddrives. You may also want to test your RAM. If you have more than one stick, pull one out at a time and see if the system locks up or not. Try different slots to make sure it isn't a bad slot. Looking at it though, it is probably your powersupply. While it is a good brand, with that much running through it, you still arent supplying enough power to the system. I had a 450watt system and my specs are: geofrce 6600GT OCed, 512MB pc3200 dual channel RAM, two 120GB HDD in a RAID 0 configuration, DVD and CD burner, Athlon xp 2500+ oced to 2.2GHz, multiple fans, Gigabyte GA-7n400 pro2 mobo, and my powersupply went out on me. I now have a 520watt powersupply and it runs smoothly. also, check your cpu to make sure its good. a good program you can use is PCCertify. Google it to find it.