Stupid Question: Is my power supply killing my PC??

Hi all,

This may sound like a stupid question from an advanced user of technology but is my power supply killing my PC??

Here is the scenario:

I have an Athlon X2 3.1GHz CPU
GTX280 (upgraded from GeForce 7 series SLi)
4 HDD's (Seagate / WD)
3 Optical drives
X-fi sound card
6GB DDR2 memory
750W Thermaltake ToughPower CrossFire /SLi certified PSU with cable management
Vista Home Premium 32bit

When I start up the machine it takes ages to boot sometimes other times its quite fast.
Sometimes it starts up and hangs infinitely until a hard reboot is required and then either repeats the scenario or boots very sluggishly.
Other times it boots - starts going through the BIOS motions and then just dies.
You can also hear a (drop and recover) variation in fan speed during normal operation (normal operation is rare of late) - with power management set to max performance.

I have this machine setup for multimedia work with CS4 3DSMax etc. but this problem seems to kill my installation of Vista and now I sit with a dud PC.

Funny thing is, I have a spare power supply (same brand, same rating- except it is not Crossfire certified nor does it have the correct pin out for SLi / CrossFire) and did not have issues (minus the GTX280).

Help please!!!

I have to get an assignment done for UNISA...

Well I doubt that the psu would be the problem. But if you think so, then swap it out and see. But I think it's more likely to be something different - your 280 perhaps?

Cooling maybe?

Ok I forgot to mention I have all of this in an Antec P180 tower case with about 8 120mm fans, so cooling is not an issue. All the items reside on an Asus motherboard which has no issues either.

I tried several things as in swap out the gfx card / mobo etc one at a time to see what happens, but have now sort of isolated it to the PSU.

Is the psu under warranty? Maybe just swap it in your system and take it in for a replacement.

More than likely your windows instalation needs a clean, that psu is more than enough and is a good make to boot

Stupid Answer

Stupid Answer:

But a new PC