Electrical short fried my v/c? HELP!

First off, I have a pentium 4 3.0ghz, 1.5gb ram, ati radeon x700 pro, 200gb hd, 350w psu.

The other night, while I was sleeping, something tripped the main circuit breaker in my house (my computer was on). The next morning I went to power up my pc when the screen was blank. I knew the computer was booting up, just without a picture. I switched the monitor over to the integrated graphics card, and I suddenly got a picture. I was hoping it was corrupted drivers on my v/c, but I tried to reinstall and it said something along the lines of not recognizing any hardware, so I assume my v/c fried. Am I correct? So I've been in the hunt for a new video card, which was due anyway. Well, to make matters worse, I woke up this morning with the same problem with my integrated graphics card: boot up fine, no picture. I bought what I thought was a decent 80min battery backup surge protector, but it is a couple years old and has been suspect at times. What can you make of all this? The only thing I've done different recently was upgrade my RAM from a 512mb to 1.5gb, but that was a couple weeks ago.

The only thing I can think of is:
1) Short in my houses power caused the fried v/c
2) Short in my pc
3) Not a big enough psu (doubtful)
4) Overheating
5) Virus???

Is there anything anyone can suggest that is going wrong here? I certainly don't want to install a new v/c with the same catastrophic result. Causes? Solutions? Just so you know, I've been out of the hardcore pc "game" since I was a kid, back when my computer was a blazing 512K RAM!! So, please dumb it down a little, as I'm trying to catch back up on all the new hardware. It's a little overwhelming...

aziraphale has something there. i was going to mention that it's possible your psu was heavily affected by the surge and outage. it's even possible that your motherboard is affected. bad, burned circuitry on the board somewhere in the power management system. it's interesting that your cpu, hd, and ram aren't affected. i'd look for a new mobo, video card, and psu. but that's just me :-) good luck!

For most of the common UPS devices (eg APC) you have to register to be able to get warranty. Sadly...

one more thing... if I had to purchase a new mobo, v/c, and psu, what would you suggest? My uses range from downloading, games (like Rome: Total War), surfing the net, etc. Basically, I'm a huge multi-tasker. I certainly don't want/need the latest and greatest, since I'm not made of money, sadly. What type of combination would give me enough power and speed to keep me current for the next couple years for a decent price? Thanks again.