Computers shut off with Abit VA-10 motherboards

[ICC]

Hello, I'm having a problem with several workstations with Abit VA-10 motherboards. The computers randomly shut off, and cannot be powered back on until you disconnect the power cable for a few minutes and plug it back in. The power button is useless unless you do that. Any ideas? Has anyone experienced similar problems with the VA-10 motherboards? All of them have the latest BIOS updates installed.

Here are the computer specs:

Chenbro minitower chassis with 200W power supply
Abit VA-10 motherboard
AMD AthlonXP 2000+
256MB DDR333 RAM (single module)
40GB Seagate IDE HD
Sony CD-ROM

All computers are running Windows XP Pro. We took one of the computers from the client into our shop and ran the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility Test and had it shut down. We updated the BIOS which had some CPU fan fix that caused the system to shut down before and ran the test again for 2 days without any issues. We told our client to update the BIOS on his other machines with this motherboard, which he did, but called us a day later with the same problem. We can't repeat the problem on the system we have in our office though.

Thanks in advance,
Roman

 

[mechBgon]

200W power supply? Try a quality 300W unit from a company such as SPI/Sparkle/Fortron, Antec or Enermax. Also, and I hope this is "well duh" to you already, you gotta have the heatsink on right as shown in picture 3.

 

[ICC]

The heatsinks are installed properly. The thing is, we have 6 computers with the Abit boards, 4 of which are acting up like this. We have another 20 or so machines with Soyo boards that we switched to later that are running the same exact configuration without any issues.

 

[mechBgon]

Hmm Well, if it were me, I'd consider testing one of the problem systems with a beefier, quality-brand power supply. Yeah yeah, it's all onboard everything... but if you have the time, you might try that. For longevity reasons, I would aim for the 300-350W area, which might be overkill until you factor in that your customer probably wants it to last for 4-5 years.