I had originally posted this in core hardware, but now I'm thinking it may be a psu issue, so I copied it over here for any experts in the electric part of hardware knowledge.

Hey all. I recently had an issue with my cpu fan. I tried installing an after market cooler, but upon finding that it banged into my psu when I closed the case, I reinstalled the original cooler. Anyway, one of the LGA 775 prongs wouldn't pop into the board so I did the EXACT thing I know I shouldn't do...

I pushed. When it didn't work, I pushed harder. Then I pushed some more.

I got impatient and decided to run the machine. I had some... issues. First, I had blue screens of death for various reasons... my CMOS settings reset themselves. Windows booted slowly or not at all.

My BIOS wouldn't load windows and I received a warning telling me I had to lower my CPU or memory voltages, so I disabled SLI memory. Everything seemed to work all right after that... except that when trying to run a memory burn-in test I got an access violation error.

I played half-life 2 for a while and all appeared to be quite well. No more issues, even after several restarts.

Today I installed a new video card and blue screened twice. After this, I reseated my memory, removed 2 sticks and tried to boot a few more times. After failing the memory test three times, My BIOS went into safe mode. I disabled SLI ready memory and the system booted up without any further problems.

I just played Portal for a bit and everything seems to be fine, except that windows xp only sees 2.8 GB of memory.

There are a couple of other things to consider... this all began after I installed a new 610 watt PSU. Could that have anything to do with it? Could the mobo be fine, but I am having voltage issues?

I Found this interesting... red blocks on my Nvidia monitor. Something to worry about? All advice will be appreciated.

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/156/nvidiamonitorqg3.jpg

Here is a follow-up post:

Also, does anyone know if the voltage readings I'm getting are too high or too low? I am concerned that the power supply may be defective. This would definitely explain the voltage problems I've had with my memory and that how lowering the memory clocks and removing dimms resulted in a successful boot. I know I do not have any defective dimms because I used them previously and never had an issue until now. I also swapped them out and I got the same results no matter which dimms or memory channel I plugged them in to.

I do have a lot of devices - maybe 610 watts isn't cutting it? The motherboard requires both a 24-pin atx connector and an 8-pin 12v connector, my molex connectors are powering four case fans, a front panel LED and a pci slot gpu fan. I've usually got two usb hard drives plugged in.

Is it possible that my power supply isn't putting out the right voltage or the right amps? It is missing the lovely red switch that many psus used to have on the back that allowed you to change the current.

Do you know any utilities I can use to check the power supply or the mainboard for defects?

I was able to run 3Dmark06 for most of the way, enough to get a score over 10,500 before it gave me an error message and stopped the test so I imagine it was almost finished. The error message said something about having "lost the device."

Now, in the event that it is a motherboard problem it's probably my fault, although given my own experience I doubt it. I also began having these problems before changing video cards.

Unfortunately, the old video card was sent back in order to get this one as a step-up so I no longer have it. Also, the psu that came with the case does not have the necessary connections for the 9800 gtx, so it's hard for me to test how things work with another configuration.

Any other advice? Does anyone know if and how I can find my psu in windows task manager?