PC Rebooting

[gaskie]

Guys,

I dont know a whole lot about this sort of stuff, so please bear with me if my terminology is not 100%.

Basically, I have just finished building a new PC for myself with the folloing specs:

P4 2.4 (133x18 in my BIOS)
Asus P4S8X-X motherboard
GF FX 5200 g/card
512mb ram
120gb WD HDD

Now, what happens is whenever I do anything that involves intense CPU activity for more than a few minutes, my PC will reboot. Shortly before this, my ASUS monitoring software will pop up, and the +3.3v meter is saying that it has dropped to around 2.8v. There are no apparent signs of overheating, because the temp guage stays the same. I really have no idea where to go from here, I cant even upgrade my OS because it reboots halfway thru when the going gets tough .

Any help with this would be so appreciated, you cant believe how angry I am that this is happening!!

TIA,

James.

 

[bjc112]

James,

This is looking to be a Power supply (PSU) issue for sure... Especially when the Asus probe is telling you the 3.3v line is dropping...

What size PSU? What brand? Remember, quality over quantity....

Also, you could check your motherboard manual or bios to up the Vcore (CPU) and up the memory voltage a bit for some more stability...

If that is no help, you might need a bigger PSU...

 

[gaskie]

thanks a lot, at least I know where to start looking now.

Its a 350w Tsunami PSU, not sure if thats good, bad or ugly to be honest!! Case is about 18months old though.

Any reccomendations for a new PSU?

Also, shortly after rebooting (but admittedly not all the time) it will continue to reboot once the POST screen goes for 2 or 3 times, at which point I unplug it and leave it for half hour. Is this consistent with a dodgy PSU?

Cheers,

James.

 

[bjc112]

Well if its rebooting whenever something CPU intensive comes along, it seems to be the PSU...

Newegg

Check out Antec, Sparkle, Enlight and Enermax...

Sprakle is great and you can pick up a 350 for a decent price...

Check it out.