Riddle me this.. haunted PC!
 

Bare with me please while I tell you my story:

It all started almost a year ago: I couldn't encode DivX'es or do any other CPU intensive task on my desktop, the PC would just freeze. (If there was sound playing it would loop the same tenth of a second of music.) Clearly, a hardware error.

At that time I was running an AMD, but most of the time I used an Intel laptop on which I also did the stuff I couldn't do on my desktop. With little time to figure the problem out, I postponed it.

Now that I'm using the desktop more and more, and play the occasional game again, it really started to tick me off..

To hell with it I said and bought me a new CPU and cooler after checking all the other periphels: same problem! I thought that the problem was still the cooling of the CPU, and so I bought a new HSF (the old one was rated up to 2200 and my CPU was a 2200 XP). The new cooler was rated to 3000+ (!) but still the same problem..

Because it was time for an upgrade anyway, I decided to ditch the whole AMD thing and I bought me a PIV, boxed with a new mobo. However, whenever I play a game now, the fps slows down (100, 50, 25, 1) and eventually locks up. (the typical Pentium sign of overheating, no?). But, since it's a boxed cooler, the CPU is brand new and NOT OCed, this can't be the problem.

I know for a fact that it is not my: videocard, memory, periphels, cables, IDE devices, PCI cards.. also the CPU temp in the bios never was that high, so this would leave us with the PSU!

I used a prog just now to check the temp under a burn in test, all readings were nominal except for the voltages!

My readings are as follows:

+12V: +12,22V
+5V: +4,11V (this is marked RED!)
Core: +1,60V
I/O: +3,38V
-12V: no reading
-5V: no reading
Aux: +2,66V (also marked RED)

So my question is now: could the voltage be the problem? I have a chieftec 340W PSU, is this enough for a 2.6Ghz Pentium? Could the problem be that either CPU or CPU FAN aren't getting enough power at critical moments (stressed)? My CPU runs almost 24/7 and I have had a faulty PSU earlier, though it did not cause the same problems.

I sure hope this is the problem, as this is the last problem I could think of..

*Thanks everyone for reading and hopes for a swift reply.

Your voltages should be maximum 10% off target. Your +5V could be giving you problems here.
Best way to check it it to try another PSU.
And the chieftec 360W should be more then sufficient for the job.

It is strange however, all the symptoms do indicate overheating.

I'd like to reply that the PSU is quite old, like 4 years. And that I have logged the temperature of the CPU (was an XP back then) with motherboard monitor 5, never did I see a huge increase in temperature in the logs at time of the lockup!

yup, that psu is prolly the problem. 4,11v is way to low.
what cooler do you have now?

I've got an Intel boxed cooler now..

I tried with a different PSU, also a chieftec, this one is 300W and I still get the same two readings in the red zone.. How is this possible? The computer still locks up.

if a 300w PSU cqn't handle the load (mucho HD's, heavy cpu, heavy graka, mucho CD/DVD drives etc.) another 300w PSU will fail too in most cases.