Ok, in my 2+ years of building computers, I have never had this happen to me. I have killed 2 motherboards within a period of 6 months. One was an ASUS P4P800e deluxe, so I definately wasn't thrilled about that, and the other was a Biostar P4VTB that I had sitting 'round collecting dust. So, this got me thinking. I wasn't overclocking anything, but it just up and dies. WTF?? Could it be my wonderful Thermaltake 420 PSU? If it is, I have no beef with replacing it, except for my current financial situation.

Here's my rig just so ya knows:

Biostar P4vtb mobo / Intel Celeron @ 1.7ghz (not oc'd)
AND/OR (no, not running at the same time)
ASUS P4P800e Deluxe with a Pentium 4 @ 3.0ghz (also not oc'd)

both used the same memory: 2x 512 Mushkin PC3200
same vid card: Rosewill ATI Radeon 9600XT (nope, still not oc'd)
same sound card: Sound Blaster Live 5.1
same hard drive: 160 gig samsung
oh yeah, and some hp cd-rw drive I yanked outa my pavilion.

I've raked my brain and tested everything else out with no problems. The only thing left is that PSU. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks guys!

how bout putting a volt-meter to the molex to start and see what ya see...

for a temporary bit of help to us, load up bios and tell us what the V readings are on all channels....all bit different for each mobo, it'll give us an idea of whats going on

nev, i can't even get to the bios anymore. nothing comes up on the screen, but it seems that everything else goes on. except the power led, that doesn't go on, and the hdd led goes on and stays on. (this is w/ the biostar board and the before mentioned celly cpu, the ASUS was RMA'd and i'm eagerly awaiting its return) I just left all the voltage settings in the bios set to default. i haven't a clue when it comes to ocing and such.

I have also tried a different video card, and it didn't help.

also, I don't have a volt meter. i know, I should get one, but I don't have the cash right now. I'll see if we have one at work.

Do you have a working motherboard at all? Anything that you can plug a mobo, cpu , ram and videocard into?

Yes, I have an Hp Pavilion also. I have the cpu in it, and it runs fine. I tried the ram, but it is pc 3200, and the max for the hp's mobo is apparently pc2100 - needless to say, I couldn't even get to windows. constant errors. I tried slower ram in the other rig, and still no go. The HP doesn't have an AGP slot, so no can do on checking video card (unfortunately). I'll pull the rest of the hardware tonight. (CD-RW, HDD, etc.)

On a lighter note, the egg finally shipped out my ASUS board back to me. And instead of the fedex express saver, they shipped it standard overnight. Thought that was cool. The board was in milwaukee at 6 this morning, so I may just have it by this afternoon. Thanks for your help guys!

Jon