Problem with MB or CPU? - bought from scan

[AmazingFish]

Hey,

I just bought an Asrock vm800 motherboard and sempron 2600 64bit cpu from scan..

When I first made put it all together it froze at post...

I did some research and found that the bios needed to be updated for the motherboard to support the cpu...

I managed to get the bios upgraded, and the computer then booted and allowed me to install windows..

The computer then randomly restarted, and once again froze at the post screen...

I find this incredibly confusing! and would appreciate any insights people might have?

The bios couldn't have reverted could it? It gets far enough into the post to show the bios version - and its still the updated version - 2.0

Also, if there are no ideas what do I do about RMAing the hardware? As I don't know whether it is the MB or the CPU causing it...

I've swapped out all other bits, memory, psu, graphics, etc so I'm sure its something to do with the cpu or mb

thanks for any help!

[herulach]

DOes it freeze at post? Or does it want some user intervention? Any error messages?

[AmazingFish]

It just freezes...

No error messages, no user intervention...

Just half of the post screen thing comes up and its frozen mid sentence... so to speak!

[herulach]

ID say that sounds like a faulty mobo to me, it may have restarted cause of a power spike that corrupted the cmos, rma time me thinks.