unexpected shutdowns!!!

hello,

firstly im not sure if im in the right category, if so i apologise.

The problem im having in my computer turns its self off for no reason. It doesnt go through the windows shutdown screen or anything. Its as if someone just pulled the plug out at the back of the computer.

All the power connections appear to fine. And the green led on my motherboard stays on. Once the computer has turned itself off the only way to turn it back on is by switching off and on at the mains, then proceeding with normal startup.

The comp specs are as follows;

ASUS A8V-E Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athalon 64 3500+
1GB corsair low latency memory
Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT pci-express card.

all this is connected to a 450W power supply. The power supply did come with the case and it wasn't expoensive so dont know if its just the power supply.
ANy help would be appreciated.

Cheers

das chimp

 

I can think of at least 4 things it can be:

1) Bad or underpowered powersupply.
2) Bad RAM
3) Overheating
4) Overaggressive timings in BIOS

For the powersupply, if it is a generic one it could well be the source of your problems, is it possible to get access to a different one off a friend to test it out? Otherwise you can go into the BIOS and look at the voltage levels, usually in a section called PC Health or something like that. It will tell you how much voltage is on the 12V, 5V and other lines. To be even more accurate, you can use a multimeter, but only do so if you are confident enough on how to use it.

For bad RAM, if you are running dual channel with 2 sticks, remove one and see if it fixes it. If not take that one out and put the other in and see if it works. You can also loosen the memory timings in BIOS if you set them manually. Running memtest http://www.majorgeeks.com/Memtest86_d4226.html can will tell you if you have defective RAM.

For overheating, do you have good ventilation in the case along with a few case fans. Is anything obstructing the cpu or video card fan? You can clean out any dust using a can of compressed air.

For overaggressive timings of your cpu or ram, set the bios options to auto for these.

 

Try stopping it from going to standby, mine just dies when it does for some reason.