Computer crashes constantly and kills my HDDs

[William Schnatz]

I recently built a computer (it was my first) and it crashes quite often. When I first made it I had an issue where it would restart without warning a few seconds after logging in. I found out that this was either a PSU or CPU problem. I fixed it by under-clocking and under-volting my CPU and the crashes became way less frequent and only during large processor loads. I'm assuming that this is because the power supply can't pump enough power (because of poor planing I had to get a 4-pin to 8-pin CPU adapter) into the CPU and it causes the whole system to lose power for a few seconds and reboot. This setup was fine until a month later. I was playing BF4 and the system crashed, nothing out of the ordinary but still an annoyance. However, when I tried to reboot I found out quickly that my drive had corrupted in the process of a sudden shut down. Luckily I had 2 drives in my PC and the other one worked fine. So I brushed it off as an unfortunate fact of owning a PC, re-installed Windows, and carried on like usual. This was not the end of my troubles though. My PC began to take up to 15 minutes to boot up and it only got worst from there. The computer would crash and every time i tried to turn it back on it would just display a messes up screen of either full black or full blue and wouldn't do anything. I'd have to let the PC sit for half an hour before it would even boot, even if i reset the BIOS on my motherboard. Both through battery removal and the jumper. I eventually re-installed Windows again and this solved the problem for a while but the same issues arose and eventually that drive crashed too. I'm seriously concerned that this is a motherboard issue because the problem persists even without a hard-drive.I know that this is not a RAM issue either as my other PC works perfectly with the sticks from the first PC in it. Please let me know if you know how to fix these issues. If you need anymore information at all about anything with my PC let me know.

Specs:

CPU- AMD FX-6300
Motherboard- ASrock 980DE3/U3S3
GPU- AMD Radeon HD 7850
PSU- Coolmax V-600

 

[tiny voices]

That PSU is 100% trash. This is probably causing the problems.

Replace it ASAP with a quality unit from Antec, XFX, Seasonic.

 

[William Schnatz]

That PSU is 100% trash. This is probably causing the problems.

Replace it ASAP with a quality unit from Antec, XFX, Seasonic.

That's what I assumed, I'm planning on getting a Corsair CX-600 this Christmas. I wanted to make sure that it was the actual cause of the problem before I spent money that I didn't need to. The only reason I even bought it was because my old PC (Dell Inspiron 620) didn't have a 6-pin power connector and i bought my 7850 off a friend for $15 bucks. The PSU was only $35 so I thought why the hell not. Anyway, thanks for the input.

 

[tiny voices]

The CX600 is better but not great. Stick with the brands I listed.

 

[William Schnatz]

The CX600 is better but not great. Stick with the brands I listed.

Would you recommend this? I'm on a budget.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151127

 

[tiny voices]

I would try for 500w.

An XFX550 is what I recommend.