PC seizures? Strange problem...

[Gnarls]

Hey guys - long time fan of the [H]. I have a problem that is very annoying, hopefully some of you guys can help me with it...

I recently bought a GeForce 6600 256MB video card. However, I figured that I would need a bigger power supply to use this baby so I took out my PC's stock 350W supply and put in a generic $30 450W supply.

Now, I don't really play computer games anymore, aside from World of Warcraft. Such a great game. However, when I am in graphic-intensive areas, my computer monitor would randomally switch off. Confused, I hit the reset button on my PC, and I hear it reset but nothing happens. If I am listening to music while this happens, the music begins to loop, like the PC froze. The only solution is by shutting off the power, giving it a few minutes, and then turning it back on.

At first, it didn't happen very often so I thought if I ignored it, it would just go away. But it is happening more and more often while playing WoW, and it makes me want to pull my hair out!

Does anyone have any ideas on what can be causing this?

Specs:
Pentium 4 2.4GHZ
XFX GeForce 6600 256MB
512MB RAM (not sure what kind)
SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

 

[m3ta1head]

This is probably one of two things:

1) Some component in the system is overheating. Be it the cpu, graphics card, chipset, mofset, whatever, all can cause instability.

2) The power supply. This is likely the problem. Your system isn't sucking too much power so you're not going to need anything beefy, but using a generic power supply is never a good idea. I'd reccomend buying this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104931

Nothing super future proof, but it's cheap. If you've got a little bit more money, actually, this is a bit more solid:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104953

I've got that unit, and it powers my 7800gt/Opteron based system properly. Before, I had a "500w" generic power supply and was experiencing crashes similar to what you're having.