A bad psu or something else?

[CompFanatic]

Hello all,
[CENTER][/CENTER]About 6 or 7 months ago after spending hundreds of dollars buying a new graphics card and RAM I could finally play oblivion. Everything was going ever so smoothly UNTIL after about 3 to 4 months of playing it. I started to see that when I played it for about a hour or more that my computer would reboot. I noticed after days to weeks went buy the reboots started occuring more frequently, as if something was wearing out. Today when I play it the computer will always reboot after a couple minutes of gameplay.
[CENTER][/CENTER]Ok so now that you got the whole story, heres what I've tested, my specs, and what I see to be the problem. First I checked to see if all the fans were running inside of the case. Secondly, I downloaded speedfan to check all of the heats for the Cpu and Gpu. It showed that my cpu was in fact overheating, peaking to 56C. To make sure it was the cpu temp I checked BIOS.
[CENTER][/CENTER]So I ran a small paint fan blowing into the case and poped in oblivion. It seemed to be running a little bit longer that usual, then BAM, the computer reboots yet again. Quickly I check BIOS for a temp reading and to my dismay the temp of the cpu was only 46C(not bad).
I have concluded that the problem points to the psu but I'm not 100% Could be the RAM but I highly doubt that, given its new and corsair makes it. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas feel free to share them so I can FINALLY debunk the problem and play oblivion in harmony.
Specs::
PSU: 250W HIPRO (old, came with the computer)
Graphics Card: Radian X800 GTO (about 6 months old)
RAM: 2 512 Corsair (about 5 months old)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Motherboard: First International (FIC)

 

[raybay]

A good Zalman or CoolerMaster cpu fan is only $15. Worth a try.
Carefully check your power supply, CPU heat sink, and fan for dust and hair.
Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management-> and Event Viewer to examine each and every red or yellow flagged problem that is logged, by clicking on the event. They will tell you a few things.
do not discount memory failure or video graphics card overheating as a cause.
It appears your problems began after you installed that Radeon X800. Were things all right up until then?

 

[CompFanatic]

The problems only occured after I installed a new agp card and new RAM, and only when I play oblivion. The fan for the CPU seems to be working fine and there is hardly any dust behind it, as I recently did a cleaning. I'm thinking that there could be dust traped under the heat sink, but I can't get it off lol. Or maybe I overclocked the CPU and forgot about it.....In any case though, its not CPU causing the reboots. I'm not ruling out the RAM or video card as a possible cause, but given my experiance, I would say its the psu. I just recalled that last summer I had a bad thunderstorm and it fried my network card, and this was before I installed my video card and new RAM. Perhaps it did something to the psu?
[CENTER]I took a look at the event viewer under "system" and it didn't give me any helpful information really.[/CENTER]

 

[raybay]

Well, changing out the power supply is easy enough and cheap enough, but let us know what worked.
My bet is on the AGP card... too many video graphics cards arrive defective for me to rule that out.

 

[Blakhart]

Hi


250watts? Pitch it and get a real psu. Amd engineers told me that an xp cpu shouldn't even boot with that wattage psu. A 400w unit should be fairly inexpensive, hopefully made by Antec, Enermax, or a similar worthy brand. That's where I would start.