Hey everyone; I have a machine that I am testing that will shut down after about 5minutes on memtest86+ and seatools. The machine hasn't had power issues before so I am wondering if it's possible for this to be caused by the cd drive?

Is it only doing this with those 2 programs? The first thing I check when any system shuts down / crashes after a few minutes is power and/or heating issues. Make sure the CPU is being cooled well enough first. I will often disconnect all but needed items when testing CPU and Memory modules so it's easier to diagnose the problem. With less components plugged in/connected that is less items that can be causing the problems. If all is fine then swap out memory modules if possible, if the computer has 2, remove 1 and see if it still reboots/crashes, if it stops, swap out the modules and test again.

That should get you started..

the machine isn't overheating, apparently normally takes 8hours+ to encode/burn a movie.. I'll test RAM+HD in my own machine from this just to be sure.. try a new cd-drive to see if the problem still persists..