I am not entirely sure this is in the correct location. I'll start with specs.
System specs
OS = Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU = Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400
RAM = 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Motherboard = ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5P43TD
Graphics Card = 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+
PSU Viotech ATX Switching Power Supply Vio70 700w
Any other specs I can provide upon request
Alright, so last week, my computer crashed in a way I have never seen before. Its about 4 years old, and its seen its fair share of issues, but not anything like this one. It abruptly shut off as if the power had been cut . . . I actually thought I had a power outage at first, until I realized my gf's computer was still on. The screen went black, the fans shut off and it was entirely silent, but the LED lights inside and outside the computer remained on. I was NOT able to restart my computer by pressing the power button, and I left it like that and went to bed. About 20 minutes later the computer spontaneously re-activated itself and all was fine.
Until this morning, this problem had not repeated itself. However, when I had used the computer for about a half hour today, it repeated this distinctive crash, along with the inability to reactivate it. Since that time it has done it an additional 3 times, 4 crashes in about 4 hours of usage (my use time has ranged from 15 minutes to about an hour before the crash occurs). The period of time before it either spontaneously reactivates or I'm able to turn it back on vary between 1 minute and a half hour.
I had some crashing issues a few months back (unrelated, and a good bit different) and I was using a temperature monitoring program to check the problem (that was caused by a CPU overheat due to a bad setting in a video game). The program (Piriform Speccy) is not showing any abnormal temperature spikes on any of the visible components. However, I noticed a while ago that the fan in my power supply no longer functions. The power supply was relatively hot the first time the computer crashed, but the later crashes today it was either only slightly warm to very warm, but never hot. Given the "power loss" behavior, I was concerned that it may be related to the power supply.
I'm considering replacing the power supply if it is the issue here, which I should probably do anyway due to the faulty fan (at least I assume its faulty . . . I don't know when it stopped working or if its possible to get it to work again). However, I'd like to find out what the cause of the issue is, I'd rather just buy a new computer rather than replace a part that won't help at all.
A friend as well as a few online reports seemed to suggest that this sort of problem can be a result of power surges. The go-to suggestion was usually to try a different outlet on the wall or surge protector. I tried this after the 3rd crash today, but it still crashed the fourth time so I am not sure if it helped (this is my fifth session online today and it is my longest lasting so far without a crash . . . around an hour).
So yeah . . . computer is turning off, stays off and will not power back on, don't know why, considering power supply as possible culprit. I'm not having any other abnormal issues with the computer. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions we could try to identify or, even better, alleviate the issue?