Nightmare of a homebuild

SYSTEM: Built for gaming
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775
MSI NX8800GTS 512M OC GeForce 8800GTS
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX ATX12V V2.2 550W Power Supply - Retail

Something just is not working here properly and im starting to think i might have assemebled a lemon.

Problem i have had and resolved:
1) Was sent a busted PSU
2) CPU fan pin poped out had my comp running at 78C for a good hour before i realized

Problems i HAVE:
1) the Heat sync fan does not start up for ~30 seconds into boot and when it does start the RPM is under 1k. (CPU according to gigbytes hardware monitor is 33C). the fan will start, stop (beep), start, stop (beep). once it does catch the beeping stops.

2) I am having programs crash like crazy. Ive tried a complete reformat of the hard drive and installed a retail copy of xp pro. Ive updated the OS along with all drivers for the hardware from their websites.

Some examples of unexpected crashes:
1) Firefox will crash. Ive never ever had firefox crash on me ever. It wasnt just a one time crash either.. its crashed about five times
2) When loading a map for counterstrike, i get a message saying that my map differs from the server map.
3) when playing world of warcraft i get a fetal crash saying it failed to read data.
4) When reinstalling wow, it fails at the half way point saying something to the point of the program quit, probably due to hard drive capacity being full. (20gb/500gb being used)

Now i dont kno what could be causing the programs to crash. I would think the hard drive would be the problem. The thing is ive tried instaling wow to an external hard drive and i still get some sort of error. I also was thinking maybe the cd drive (but counter strike was downloaded from internet) was extracting things incorrectly. But it could also be mobo/ram/cpu.

So i come to you guys in desperation. The computer runs multimedia type **** fine, but i bought the comp for gaming and i cant even use it for the games i like to play.

ANY suggestions? at this point all help is welcome. any idea? any suggestions? any advice? any similar stories?

basically, if you guys were in my shoes, what would you be doing to fix the problem?

thanks so much

chips currently 31C..... thats not overhearting.

i burned the .iso and restart comp with the cd drive in the tray and it would crash and restart before it would run memtest

http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=infoyn5.jpg

http://img100.imageshack.us/im...9 [...] tttyi7.jpg

On your mobo dude, I don't have an intel board, AMD guy here myself, but I have a gigabyte mobo. On mine there's an option in the bios that allows you to set whether you want automatic fan control or some option like that to be on or off. Turn that off. My cpu would heat up a little, turned that off so it just runs at full blast all the time, not nearly as many problems with that. Also, do try memtest, if that does not work, if you have windows vista, boot from the dvd, and under the repair menu, it has a memory diagnostic utility, run a couple passes with that and see if you get errors.