Brand new PC, stuttering problems...

[ryedizzel]

I really need your help guys. I just built this new PC yesterday:

AMD Athlon64 3700+ CPU (San Diego core)
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard
2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR500
76GB Western Digitial Raptor 10,000 RPM (SATA)
GeForce 7800GTX (PCI Express)
Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS
Ultra X-Connet 500W Power Supply
2 x 120mm fans with speed controllers (it's kept cool)

I did a fresh install of Windows XP with SP2. Then I installed my chipset, video, and sound drivers. Thats it.

Yet for some reason while using the PC it keeps freezing for a couple seconds and then continues. It stutters like this about once every couple minutes. I could be watching a video, playing a game, or even just surfing the web and moving the mouse around- it dosen't matter.

I am really getting frustrated because I dont want to start canabilizing my PC and sending parts back. Especially when I don't think it is defective hardware.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated...
-Ryan

 

[TheGuru3k]

Check that you have the most recent drivers for everything. In most cases it will be software...

 

[ryedizzel]

Ok guys, here is an update.

I called the mobo manufacturer and they basically suspected incompatible memory. This was kind of hard for me to believe considering Crucial (in my opinion) is one of the best. But anyway, just to make sure I went out and bought a matching pair of 512MB Corsair XMS3200 sticks. When I put them in and turned it on the PC, no display came up. After a couple hard reboots it finally came up but then got stuck on the BIOS screen.

One more hard reboot allowed me to get into the BIOS and set everything back to defaults. It then booted into Windows fine and every reboot from that point forward was ok. I watched a couple videos and loaded some games to see if the sporadic freezing problem was still there. And guess what, it is! *cry*

At this point I really don't know what else to do except swap out the CPU or motherboard which is a serious pain. When I built this PC everything I purchased was brand new in the retail box. And considering its expensive equipment, I was very careful about grounding myself and not slipping with the screwdriver while putting it together. Not to mention I have been building PCs for over 6 years now, so it?s not like I made any rookie mistakes.

Some of you asked about my voltage rails, and here is the info reported in Asus Probe. Those tiny dips were me loading up World of Warcraft and running around a busy idea in Ironforge to max the system: http://www.unifiedguild.com/downloads/voltage.jpg

Anyway guys, any additional help or ideas would be really appreciated. This is the first time I decided to go with an AMD system and I don't want to regret it. :-(