A bit perplexing...

Well, the stand of thing is pretty much irrelivant, dont worry about it.

These sudden power cuts are usually very varied in reasons. Ive many cases which were like yours.

The several reasons ive seen this happen is:
Faulty Power Outlet
Dodgy power supply
Bad power cord (the cord that goes from PSU to wall outlet)
Faulty power lines and molex plugs.
Cheap defective fan

But from what i see in your case, the main cause should be the last 3, or maybe your OCZ PSU was a defective. I would replace the power cord from PSU to wall socket and see how that goes, then i would check each power cord that is not part of your PSU and also your fans.

Well, that's all i can think of. Or maybe it could be in the software, but on that note, im not sure at all.

Well, for the surge protector, i would most definately check on it. That's been like, what, 6 years?

As for those lines, im talking about within the case. There were several cases of line problems when i had a look at a few people's PCs, exhibiting random restarts and equiptment failure. For example, there was one where the PC wont even start. I unplug the PC for about 20 seconds, plug it back in, short the motherboard pins for start with a screwdriver and the fans spin up for under 1 second, then everything dies and the power button stopped responding. Before that problem occured, the user was experiencing problems with her CD drive, so being perplexed with the problem, i unplugged the CD drive and turned it on again and it worked. But apparently, it was the wire that powered the cheap 120mm fan on the front of the case that was to blame. The fan worked perfectly, no problems until this problem occured. I took the fan out of the loop and the CD rom and the PC worked just fine.
Another case was of 2 hard drives clicking and random restarts. He thought his power supply was to blame, so he replaced it, the problem remained after that and it turned out to be the cheap Y connector that fed both his HDDs with power. Rerouted a few cables and took the Y out of the loop and problem fixed.
In both cases, the wires looked perfectly fine when i took them out. No burn marks, no loose pins, nothing.

As for fans, well, i plug em in everywhere, but it's suggested that you dont plug cheap fans on the same molex lines as hard drives as power problems with the fan can cause data corruption or drive failure.

For diagnostics tools, to my knowledge, there are none.


Good luck on finding the culprit

Sorry about your problems, I just have to say that is a DAMN nice setup. That EL OCZ memory is some of the best you can have on an A64 system. The PSU too. Actually the whole setup is pretty much EXACTLY what I would build at the moment, with the small exception of the Sony DVD writer.

Nice job, I hope you get it working and everything works out for you

I just prefer the other brands out there more. Sony doesn't offer anything new to writing DVD's, nor do I know if they are quality. I am sure they are, I just know that NEC, Plexter, and even Lite-on have quite a few tweaks you can do. Like BitSetting, hacking the firmware for better performance, sometimes even getting faster write speeds on older models, so on and so forth.

And yes, that 600 will be able to handle anything and everything you throw at it. You should have gotten the connection with the PSU itself, either that or you will get it with the Video Card. At least you should

I have a surge protector...i keep kicking the off button....yours could be bad...being 6 yrs old, though

Probobly not, since it shutdown when the processor was in no way 'loaded' and it seems to happen randomly. The board can force a shutdown due to thermal problems, but it's a very slim chance, though i would check everything since it's such a perplexing problem.

On other forums, I've read about a lot people having problems using multi-rail PSUs, like yours, with the Asus SLI motherboards. In most every case the problem was solved by swapping them for high quality single-rail PSUs.
Hope this helps.

can you elaborate on "power adapter"?

I can only assume the mainboard was attempting to pull too much power across the +3.3v and +5v rail causing the power supply to fail and 'shut off' the system. I'm also assuming the 4 pin power adapter was a molex connector and the mainboard was needing more juice from the power supply off a +12v rail.

I had a similar problem when I first got my 6800GT. My power supply couldn't handle it so I'd have random reboots.

The OCZ Powerstream 600 is a very nice power supply. Unless it's defective I wouldn't think you would need a different unit.

I would suggest looking at programs like the Overclockulator and calculating your Wattage draw across each line, then comparing it to the specs of the OCZ to check if it's giving enough power.

But, the characteristics of a PSU not giving enough power is clicking hard drives and random reboots, not shutoffs. Shutoffs typically indicate electrical problems and the protection systems of the PSU kicking in to prevent disasters, or the motherboard shutting down because the CPU is getting too hot.

i was thinking of using the same power supply in my set -up. that ocz ram you got is that revision 2?