Intermittent failure to start on a new system

[duttonta]

I put together this system and tried to start, but it intermittently fails to start and the HDD light and DVD drive light alternately flash. If I put in the disk to install the OS it spins it, then stops and the HDD light flashes, then it spins the disc, then the HDD light etc... Every now and then I get to the BIOS, but if it's on for 10-20 minutes it freezes. Afterward it won't start again, except at random much later. Clearing the RAM on the mobo appears to have no effect. Any thoughts? Could these be heat problems, insufficient power, a bad motherboard...?


Equipment:
ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe Mobo (790FX chipset)
AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE processor
Corsair 2GB 800Mhz RAM in dual channel (2 more GB in the mail)
nvidia 9600 GT
Ultra 500W PS
Seagate 250GB HDD

Thanks for the assistance.

[shadowpr]

This is our standard troubleshooting guide: Having problems with a new build? Try this.

Follow that, and see if you can get into bios consistently without freezes.