M57SLI-S4 victim of crap psu?

[boondog]

Last month I inherited my oldest boy's old, broken, home-built game box:

• Gigabyte GA M57SLI-S4
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
• 2x 1GB Mushkin HP2-6400 DDR2
• nVidia GeForce 6600 GT OC
• X-Infinity ATXB6KLW Case
• w/420W Turbolink LC-A420ATX PS

I'm certain that the last item in my list above, that generic Turbolink PS, is responsible for this poor machine's woes which include, among other symptoms:

• Aborted software and OS installations
• HDD errors
• Aborted loading of installed gfx drivers
• Etc...

I've tried XP, Vista and Win7 installs to help diagnose and solve these errors but all have the same issues listed above with a few of their own thrown in. I was thinking of trying some Linux, perhaps Ubuntu or SUSE, but am sure I will get a version of the same bad results.

What I'd like to know is: Is there any hope for this older, misfed hardware, especially the mobo? It's far from state-of-the art but would be great for a general purpose PC for the wife or perhaps even a living room HTPC. I'm not a pro builder at all so I don't have much access to good, working hardware for swapping and diagnosis so I need to know where to start and if it's worthwhile. Any thoughts or pointers would be appreciated.

For now though, I've already got an order from newegg on a truck for new innards for the X-infinity case:

• ASUS M3A76-CM
  1 stick Kingston KHX6400D2/2G R
  AMD Athlon 64 X4 6400+
  ARCTIC FREEZER 64 PRO CPU cooler
  WD 640 GB WD6400AACS HDD
  OCZ 600GXSSLI-B 600W RT PS

I realize this isn't dream machine parts but I'm on a real tight budget (who isn't) and this is the best I could work out. I should have polled this board, I guess, but I have to do this on the system I'm fixing since it's all I have.

Any thoughts on my first question about salvaging the old system or the new parts I'm putting in the old case are much appreciated. Should I try the new PS on the Gigabyte board before replacing it to see what happens? Or could this cause more problems with the old mobo and/or the new PSU? I only have the one gfx card to try with no new replacement planned as the new ASUS board has ob gfx.

[uddarts]

start with the psu. check the pc health in the bios for the 12v rail. not unusual to see somewhat lower readings. ie: 11.8xv.

better yet, beg, borrow or buy($20) a digital multimeter.

http://www.driverheaven.net/guides/testingPSU/

run memory86

http://www.memtest.org/

download your hard drive's testing app from their site.


ud

[boondog]

Feeling a little dumb.. I must not have properly reset the CMOS. I just did that and drivers, video card and HD seem ok now. I have a pretty good Fluke multimeter already so I'm still going to check those voltages and replace the pos psu good or bad.

Thanks for the help.

[uddarts]

you're gettin' there, that's all that matters.


ud