Electrical short fried my v/c? HELP!

[jschultzrx]

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]

It could be that after the power out when your UPS takes over and starts to get low battery it delivers very unsteady voltages. I tested this a few times and towards the end of the batt the monitor starts to flicker badly. That could have badly stressed your PSU and along with that the rest of the system. Just a guess though...

 

[cpburns]

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!

 

[erloas]

I would check your warranty on your battery backup, if there was any sort of surge, be it from the power grid or because of the battery backup itself then the battery backup warranty should cover the replacement of any parts on it. Having surges fry stuff is exactly what those are supposed to prevent.

Anything that happened on the PC end, such as the PSU going out, should have flipped the breakers in the battery backup long before they flipped the main breakers in your house. Even if the battery of the backup supply was old and wasn't able to power your equipement, the surge protection it offers should not be effected.

If after a power event you have things fail and are on a surge protector/battery backup then the warranty on the surge protector/battery backup should cover anything damaged.


As for what actually needs replaced, chances are if it fried your video card there could be some latent defects in other components too. Which were damaged but aren't going to instantly fail. There is a chance that what failed was actually the motherboard, but only in an area that effected the video card. It could be that both are fried too, its hard to say.

Before you replace anything though I would contact the batter backup company and see what they can do. Even the cheap power strips have like $10000 worth of equipement damage built into the warranty.

 

[aziraphale]

I would check your warranty on your battery backup...

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

 

[jschultzrx]

Well, I appreciate all the insight... even though it was probably worse than I had hoped. I have my fingers crossed that I registered for that UPS warranty. Either way, I get an excuse for an immediate upgrade! :/ Thanks all.

 

[jschultzrx]

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.