Abit w/ AMD Lockup Issues... Troubleshooting

[koolscooby]

Hello All,
I'm new to the Hard forums as an official user, but have browsed them for years... im a fan.

I'm having an issue with a computer that i've built... i'll give the specs first:
Abit AT7-Max2
AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Geforce FX5200 8x AGP w/ 128MB
1x512MB 400MHz PC3200 Kingston ValueRAM

Attached to the standard IDE Bus:
15gb Maxtor HD (BOOT)
20gb Maxtor HD
DVD+/-RW (Lite-on)
200gb Western Digital HD

Attached to the RAID Bus: (Highpoint Controller)
2x80gb Western Digital HD

I initially had 256MB of un-named ram in the system, running Windows XP with no problem... except that 256MB of ram is not enough for anything i want to do... so upgraded it got to 2x512MB of the Kingston ValueRAM... this immediately screwed up everything (lockups)... so as to diagnose the problem, I installed Fedora Core 4 and still had lockups... After an RMA, I found that I can only have 1 stick of 512MB at 400MHz in this motherboard, so thats what im currently running.

The problem:
I'm still having issues with system lockups, and am not positive on where to start troubleshooting. Lockups are sporadic, but generally when using multimedia applications. (But this could be because multimedia apps generally take more horsepower than day to day tasks) One of my first thoughts was that I need a stronger PSU... i'm using a generic... i think its 400 or 450 watt, I don't recall.

I've ran memtest86+ on the single stick, no problems found.

I think that my first step is to upgrade the motherboard... so I can use both sticks of my ram.. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance... I really appreciate the help!

 

[koolscooby]

any ideas?