Random Hard Locking, Suspect PSU

[Satanchia]

System specs

WinXP SP1
Intel P4 2.6C 800Mhz FSB
2x 512MB Corsair PC3200 RAM
Western Digital 80GB 7200RPM HD
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
SB Live! 5.1
onboard ethernet
Generic Maxpower 350w PSU
Shuttle AB60N model Mobo
No OCs

Recently I have had my computer hard lock at random, while sitting on the desktop or in any program. I am suspecting it's my shoddy PSU that's causing my lockups because of its weak +12v rail @12A while the P4 and R9800pro are +12v hungry. It didn't start this erratic behavior till I switched from 9600XT (which doesnt connect to the power supply) to 9800 Pro. At one point I thought it could have been overheating but it Hard locked with my CPU Idle at 32*c. Every time it Hard locks you can hear every fan in the Case shut off for a split second then they all start up again, and the HD load light comes on like its under permanant load, everything on the sceen freezes,and it's unrecoverable past there without hitting the reset button. It does the exact same thing every time it locks up. Turning off fast writes, vpu recover, and setting the AGP to 4x didn't change a thing, still locked up.

All of my drivers are up to date, no conflicting drivers such as Nvidia drivers etc... my BIOS are flashed to the most recent version. Memtest showed no errors, and my voltages except for the +12v are within their acceptable ranges (+1/-1%). +12v Rail in the BIOS shows as near 13v, but MBM5 shows it as ~12.40v. I have a new Enermax 350w PSU on the way, with an acceptable 26a 12v rail that supposedly SHOULD be able to supply enough +12v Amps. Wondering if the PSU would be the culprit?

 

[Ice Czar]

your likely correct
and my personal opinion is that your placing all your components at risk
power is not the place to get cheap when building a system
Id rather run a rig out of a cardboard box than use substandard power
or even "standard" power

this the beast?
http://www1.2themax.com/products/maxpower/HE300A.asp
chronically short on +12V in all likelyhood

 

[Satanchia]

Mine is the 350W with 40a 5v and 14a 3.3v , its still the cheapo one that came with the case, I'll report in tomorrow when I find out how my cpu runs on a 32a 32a 26a on 5v 3.3v and 12v on the 350w enermax I have coming.

 

[Shackmaster]

I learned my lesson the hard way a couple years ago when it comes to a PSU (went through 2 PSU's before I lost a few GB of data )

http://www.directron.com/sf550stainless.html

My computer killed 2 300W PSU's and I had a 400W one that couldn't keep my rig stable when I overclocked it.

I now have a 520W PSU with good rails and have never had any problems. (52A 5V rail, 20A 12V rail) This is the one similar to what I have if you wanna save a few bucks instead of getting the 550, but has only 3 fans