Hard one for you techs out there

[S Knight]

I built a computer a little less then a year ago (I have built dozens) and it ran great for the first few months, but for the past month I have been struggling with a very annoying problem. It keeps turning off but its not shutting right down, just all the video dies , the monitors go to power saver mode but the fans and lights are still on inside. There is no pattern, sometimes it shuts down after 5 mins of running then other times I might get a hour or 2 out of it, and it doesn't matter what I am doing, it could just be running while I watch tv and it dies or I could be playing a game on it. I have nothing running in msconfig besides norton. Hibernation is turned off and my HD's are set to never turn off. I even formatted 2 weeks ago and after a fresh install it still shuts down, it even shut down twice while doing the re-install of windows. I am leaning towards heating or power problems but I have never had a power with heating or power in my past experiences.

Asus P4P800 deluxe
Intel 3.06 - 800 FSB w/HT
4x Kingston 512meg PC3200
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra - (I run dual display as well)
Creative Labs SB Audigy 2
On board Lan
2x 120gig WD HD's 7200rpm 8 meg cache
2x 180gig Maxtor HD's 7200rpm 8 meg cache
Liteon CD burner
Liteon DVD burner
Sony DVD rom
2 Case fans
Antec 400W power supply

Windows XP Pro
Norton System Works 2004
Latest Bios
Windows service pack 1 and 2
Latest drivers for all devices

My first thought was heating, but when I check the Temp its always around 44 degrees, give or take 2 degrees. So I put a 15 inch house fan pointing directly inside the case (with the side off) and it still shuts down. So then I thought lack of power, I know 7 IDE devices would pull a lot of power, so I unplugged 2 of the HD's and 1 of the roms, tried that with the fan running still and it still shuts down. I am stumped, any help or suggestions at all will be greatly appreciated.

[merlin_2]

all seem to point to your graphics card... type dxdiag in the run box it may tell you more..

[Computer_Commando]

I think you're on the right track.  I just responded on another thread with a similar problem.
http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=3;action=display;num=1097743644

I'll repeat some of it here:

Spurious rebooting or shutting down is a sure sign of impending hardware failure.  I've experience this with an HP Pavilion.  The owner got fed up with it, stripped the drives out and gave the rest to me.  I put drives in it and it worked for several months, but would reboot occassionally.  One day, it would not turn on at all.  It turned out to be a high power audio plug-in card where an electrolytic capacitor failed.  Capacitor failure can occur in a number of ways, it may take a while to die.   When they die, they can short or open, sometimes they explode.  Power supply temporarily shorts and computer reboots, dead short and it shuts down.

It could be power supply, motherboard, video card or anything plugged into motherboard.

[S Knight]

Thanks for the replies, I never thought of the video card but I did the dxdiag and I didn't see anything abnormal in there I can't paste it here because it wont allow me to post a message that big, if you want to check it out i can make a couple posts in this thread.

I actually remember back when it first started I checked the event veiwer in computer management and it showed a sound card error a couple of times (can't remember the exact error now), but recently it shows no errors or anything in the event veiwer, I did try taking out the sound card and still had the problem, I replaced the on board lan with a 3Com lan card and disabled the onboard, still same problem, I have removed 2 of the HDs and 1 of the roms and same problem, so I guess that narrows it down to the other HD's, the other roms, cpu, mb, ram or vid card I guess. Any other ideas?

[Computer_Commando]

Is it possible you're overclocking in BIOS?

Specs for MB show:

Overclocking options - FSB adjustable within 100 to 400 MHz in 1 MHz increments;
- Adjustable voltages on the processor, memory and AGP.
- Asus C.P.R and Asus AiOverclocking technologies

What about Power Management?

Specs for MB show:
Power management - Wake-up on modem, mouse, keyboard, LAN, timer and USB;
- Standard 20-pin power connector ATX (ATX-PW);
- Additional 4-pin power connector;

[S Knight]

No, it has the options to overclock but I have them set to default, not much point to overclock with a machine like this

[Computer_Commando]

No, it has the options to overclock but I have them set to default, not much point to overclock with a machine like this...
 so I guess that narrows it down to the other HD's, the other roms, cpu, mb, ram or vid card ...

I'm out of ideas.  You certainly chose the best components for this computer.  Intermittent problems are almost impossible to find, until the offender just dies completely.  Motheboard still under warranty?  Maybe you can get a replacement without paying for it.  Your 1 year is almost up.  The Secret Imbedded Board Destructor's clock is ticking down!  Sure to blow up exactly 1 minute after the warranty expires.  Memory usually has a lifetime warranty.

[Raptor]

Have you tried testing your computer components on another computer?

[S Knight]

Thanks for the input guys, I am lost myself, I havn't tried the components in another machine yet which is what I guess im stuck doing now, I have 8 computers here so it shouldn't be to hard to do, I didn't really want to do that because this is the only motherboard I have that has a RAID controller. I think I will take everything out minus the MB and CPU and try them in another computer, if it doesn't do it I guess I have the problem narrowed down. I will keep looking back for any other ideas you guys have, ill let you know what my conclusion is when I find it. If I can...