Seemingly random crashes

[ThEFeAR]

Hi everyone.

Im having trouble with my Pc. Until about a month or 2 ago everything worked fine. Since then ive been getting random crashes all the time and its getting very annoying.
When it crashes the screen just goes black, all lights on the case remain as they were.
Sometimes it can be restarted with reset button, other times I have to hold down the power button to power it down, then turn it back on.
These crashes rarely occur during desktop work (although they have once or twice) its usually in a game. Ive not made it to the end of the F.E.A.R demo yet because of these crashes (if uve played the demo you'll know its not very long, gives you an indication of how long I get to play games for before a crash :-/)
Testing other games, Doom3 lasts a while (20 mins or so) before a crash, HL2 lasts less time (maybe 10 mins). I can play World of Warcraft for about an hour usually before a crash.

System specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 3000+
512Mb 333Mhz RAM (unbranded)
Gigabyte GA-7VA motherboard (VIA KT400)
WD 40Gb HDD
Audigy 2 sound card
Geforce 6800GT (AGP)
Enermax 350W PSU
Sony 8xDVD-RW

Ive run a fair few diagnostics on components, RAM checks out ok (did have 2 sticks, 1 went bad and got removed in my first attempt to stop the crashing) Burn in test runs fine for hours (so im guessing its not overheating). Ive tested the HDD with chkdsk only, is there a better (free) utility around?

At the moment the only thing I can think of that is causing this is that the PSU is only 350W, however it does supply a lot of A on the different rails. I cant remember exactly but i think its something like...

3.3V 32A
5V 32A
12V 26A

Surely thats enough juice?
Ive got no problem buying a new PSU, its just that I dont want to unless I know its definately that.

Anyways, ive written far more than I intended.

Thanks in advance

ThE.FeAR

 

[wpshooter]

ThEFeAR:

Western Digital has diagnostic software for your drive on their website.

However, the power supply would be the first suspect. Please see my suggest to Le from another thread as follows:

Le:

All of this makes me believe, even more strongly, that the problem lays with your PS. Either it has some minor defect in it or it just does not have quite enough horsepower when called on to do OC. I know you have run your specs thru the calculator, but in the real world, there is a lot of ART to this thing of getting a computer to work correctly as opposed to science.

I believe if you would run out to your local computer/electronic retailer and pick up a PS with just a bit more wattage, your problem would be cured and if not you should be able to return the PS, in case this turns out to not be the problem. Of course, I would ask to make sure you could return for refund, as opposed to an exchange).

There is always the possibility that there is a defect in your processor, but I doubt it. Let's hope it is not the processor, because if it is not returnable, this is going to cost you a lot more in both money and down time.

Good luck.