Help!: Motherboard, Voltage, and PSU Issue(?), I think...

d'anconia

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Okay so bare with me here, I'm having some issues and I consider myself usually pretty good at solving computer problems but even this is above my level of skills.

About 6 months ago or so I decided that it was time for me to create, for once, my own customized desktop so that I could actually play PC games on it. So to start off I bought and installed the following items:

Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80605I7860 - Retail
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100269VXLE Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card - Retail
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996657 - Retail
Hard Drive: WDC WD5000AKS-00V1A0 ATA Device (that's what it says in my Device Manager, I don't know much about the hard drive really)
PSU: Power Supply that came with the tower case
Mobo: We decided upon the P7P55 LX Motherboard by ASUS because my other motherboard (by GIGABYTE, more on that later, was not working)

So I got it up and running and it seemed like that the PSU was not enough to handle all the USB devices I have (External Hard Drive, Keyboard, Mouse, Linksys wireless USB adapter, and iPod) so I was usually only able to have so many USB devices attached to the computer at any given time. This was annoying so I decided to get a new PSU but was told that the motherboard I had (the ASUS) sucked and that I'd need a better motherboard if I was going to set up a better PSU. As a result I decided to send in my GIGABYTE motherboard to get it fixed.

Then last week I had them replace the PSU and Mobo. The new items added were:

GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD3R LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
and
Antec Earthwatts 650Watt ATX12V v.2.2
*I should mention that I don't know how much work the computer store guy who installed this stuff really did. It was a small computer store so I question the guy's abilities. He may have just physically put the stuff in and that's it.

So just started things up and they seemed to be fine at first BUT once I started doing stuff on the computer it would freeze (including audio loop). At first it seemed to come from the game I was playing but recently it seems that the freezing has been caused by things done inside of Windows. For instance recently I have been playing Dirt 2, which is a driving game, and it can last for 30+ minutes before freezing whereas if I were to start browsing or installing files it would almost definitely freeze up within minutes.

So I personally have a feeling that the issue either has to do with temperature, memory, or, more likely, voltage issues. The problem though is that I just don't even know where to start on these issues. How do I check these variables and if I know what the issue is then I still wouldn't know where to start to fix it. For instance the idea of messing with the voltage is something I don't want to do unless I really know what I'm doing, right?

Can anyone help me here a bit? Thanks a ton!
 
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