Followup on PC built outside the case

My bad. I didn't check my facts before posting and was going from memory. That's the bug I was referring to.

Correct.

Ditto. I've seen this with other products. They fail to work correctly outside the case or cabinet, for no obvious reason, but (after hours of frustrating troubleshooting) they work correctly when put back.

PhenomII 955 on Asus M4A78T-E o'clocked to 4 ghz. Not a single problem.

I for one haven't paid for an Intel platform since 2000.

That would be my advice also. Get it mounted proper in a case and see what happens. Not only the proper grounding but the proper airflow over the devices.

Thanks for the continued input everyone. Most recent developments: I again tried the Win 7 on my new SATA, but with a known-good PSU, and it froze in about 15 minutes. So it's not the PSU. After this, I loaded a

BTW, ran Memtest for ~ 3 hours. No errors.

I'm considering replacing the vid card, since it seems a very likely suspect. I'm not a gamer (though this gear should be up to it), so I don't need anything tooooo drastic (read, EXPENSIVE). As JL suggested, I'm wondering about the PCI E 2.0 slots. Also, I've been using a X16 slot (MOBO also has X8 slots). Could the Vid card be the culprit? And opinions on this card for my applications:

Thanks again for the replies!

Dan

I have had to assemble PC's some years back for applications where a normal case couldnt be used. One thing that was noticed was the amount of heat on the backing plate that the motherboard was mounted onto. This led me to believe that the metal PCB standoffs and backing plate play an important role in passing heat from the motherboard to the backing plate (as well as providing a gap for air circulation underneath. They may also help greatly in providing a very solid earth connection as well.

I know from experience that memory test programs do not always find bad RAM.

If the card works under multiple operating systems, that pretty much rules out the card. However, you might have problems with the driver.

One of the good things about cards using Nvidia chips is that they'll run with "generic" drivers written by Nvidia. (This is also probably true of the other major brand, whose name I can't think of). Try using one of these.

Look for an EVGA branded GeForce 9500 series.

On the Dell that I previously mentioned, playing Winamp while using IE results in a blue screen within a 1/2 hour . On Friday I updated all drivers and firmware and ran Dell's self diagnostics; still computer blue screens when using Winamp. It also crashes when streaming audio using Real Player though it might take an hour or so. Chuck