power issue, or mobo going out?

[black_b[ ]x]

Lately I've been having problems with my PC. symptoms:

I've had problems with it booting up in general, last week or 2?. sometimes it freezes during POST, right after it displays the CPU info.

twice now I've been playing CoD2 (just installed yesterday) and my controls lock up. keyboard and mouse are unresponsive, but the game and graphics keep going (AI runs around, shoots, etc). once it does this, it locks up repeatedly as above. i think unplugging the PSU helps the lockups, but the keyboard still doesn't work. have to unplug that and reboot to get it back. (only done this twice, so that may not always be needed)

system is 16 months old: K8N neo platinum, A64 3200+, 2x512 ballistix @ 2-2-2-5, eVGA 6800 ultra, fortron 500w PSU, cpu and gpu are watercooled. idle temps now are: 24/33/44 mobo/cpu/gpu so I don't think its overheating, and nothing is overclocked. Fresh install of winXP and latest drivers.

I still need to run memtest, but just curious if anyone had an idea. My monitor has also been acting a little strange, warming up slowly (although it is 4 years old, hitachi cm772). I may be running into power issues (moved into an old house w/ questionable wiring in september)

--edit- memtest86+ just went through once w/o errors.

 

[Javelin3o4]

faulty wiring can cause freezing, crashing issues and also damage your computer weather due to power sags or power spikes, is your wall outlet a 3 prong outlet? you may want to try a battery back that has AVR (automatic voltage regulation) that way if there is a power sag the computer still gets its required power.

But run through the basica, memtest, scan for bad hdd, clean out all the fans, etc.

 

[black_b[ ]x]

thanks, I'm pretty sure the UPS is my next step. I think i need a big one though