comp shuts down please help

Well i have been playing warhammer online beta for a while with no problems than all of a sudden my computer would shut down. Some times it would be right away when i play and some times it would be after an hour or so. My comp runs fine with every other program so i decided to reformat and now about 10-20% into the installing of windows it shuts off. I have checked all my fans and took off my panels and have a big fan blowing into my case. Have also checked the memory. please help thanks

NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI mobo
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.1GHz
8190MB RAM
500GB HD
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX
Windows Vista™ Home Premium

 

600w power supply i have but forgot to put on post

 

:wave Welcome to Major Geeks! :major
You have an identical thread in the software forum, here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=170306

Please limit threads to one forum per topic. Posting the same topic in different forums only confuses the situation for both you and those helping you. Plus you'll likely get a lot of repeat advice, so please limit this to one forum or the other.
:-D

My first guess would be that something is overheating, either the CPU, chipset, or possibly even the power supply. The power supply may be faulty/dying too. Also, check the motherboard and closely look at all the capacitors; they should all be PERFECTLY flat on top. If any of them -even just one- is slightly 'popped' or bowed outward or appears to have some stuff leaking out, then you have bad capacitors and the motherboard requires replacement. There may be a BIOS setting that is set to shut off the PC at a certain temperature. If this is set too low, that may be the issue. A faulty hard drive or other component like memory may be the cause also. Run a full hard drive diagnostic, and and in depth memory diagnostic. All the main hard drive makers have free diagnostic downloads on their web sites, and they are bootable. Use a bootable memory diagnostic and run the extended advanced tests and let run overnight. Remove the CPU fan, clean the CPU and the heat sink and apply a fresh layer of thermal compound: do not use too much. It doesn't take much; a small dab about the size of an unpopped popcorn kernel should be plenty. Unless you're running a 64bit operating system, your 8gb of memory is being wasted. 32bit operating systems only address +/- 3.2gb of memory, so in your case, over 4gb of RAM is sitting there unused. Try it with 1gb of RAM.

 

well my HD is brand new and i did reapply new compound on the chip. Nothing seems to be wrong on my mobo. I am running 64bit vista. i hope the new compund works and my fan didnt seem very secure on my chip when i took it off so that may be the case. thanks db