Motherboard problem?

[CWX]

I am writing about a friend of mine's PC that is having some major problems. I feel partially responsible for it since I helped him select the hardware and put it together and I would like to try and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

Hardware:
Asus K8VSE Dlx
AMD 64 3000+ (754, Newcastle I think)
2x 512MB PC3200 Corsair Value Select
WD 200GB Sata 150
GeForce 5200 128MB
DVD-RW (not sure of brand but iirc Pioneer 108)
Generic 1.44 Floppy

The Problem:
On boot-up the motherboard says "System failed due to CPU overclocking" and refuses to post. Now I'm pretty sure that all the values are stock (FSB 200 and bios doesn't allow for multiplier changes so I assume it's using the stock multiplier of 10x) and voltage is all set to the min. With Asus mobos you can reset 3 times to set the values back to factory defaults and with the last mobo we had doing this reported that the bios was corrupt (bad checksum) and prompted us to recover with the Asus cd, which we did. When even after recovering we were still getting checksum errors we RMA'd the mobo to Asus. Now we got the replacement board yesterday and put everything back together and tested it here at the office and it seemed to run fine. I didn't get to test it as long as I would have liked but it ran perfectly fine for a little over an hour. He took it home and plugged it in and it booted to windows at first but after 30 min or less blue screened and started with that "System failed due to CPU overclocking" thing again. He is convinced that it is the mobo again and wants me to pick out a new non-Asus one for him. I think it's probably the motherboard too but I don't want to have him spend money if he doesn't need to and have the problem persist. Do you think this is a motherboard problem or do you think one of the other components is to blame? What are some surefire tests to perform to rule out the other components? (I don't have another socket 754 to use as a testbed unfortunately) If its not the motherboard, then what is the likely culprit?

Thanks in advance,
-Dave

[mjc]

Try replacing the CMOS battery and then resetting the BIOS...

[CWX]

I got it up and it's been stable for a few hours now. I just did 4 passes of memtest and no errors. I'm gonna stress test it and see if I can figure something else out.

mjc- I'll ask him to grab one and see if that helps.

I think it might have something to do with the power in his house or some other electrical disruption. He already blew 2 PSU's and shorted out something in the power connector of laptop I lent him. He told me he has been using 2 surge protectors so I doubt it's a power surge - maybe some outside electrical disruption?

-Dave

[mjc]

Two surge protectors aren't going to be any better than a single and are more likely to cause problems.

And if he has had that kind of luck with power supplies, then I'd suggest having the wiring inspected. Especially if there are problems with other devices...

[CWX]

Update - I ran prime95 for 2 hours and not even a hiccup. I can't get this thing to crash for the life of me. I'll have him buy the battery and keep it handy to try out if he experiences problems again but I'm begining to think the problem is his house.

-Dave

[saphalline]

Get him an uninterruptible power supply - UPS. That should clean up any problems with his wiring, at least as far as using his computer goes. But I definitely agree with mjc that a qualified electrician should give his wiring a once-over.