Faulty Nvidia Graphics card or PSU?

[1NF1N1T1]

Hi there everyone,
New to this awesome forum here.

OK 6 months ago I assembled a budget gaming CPU with maxing out every hardware that was available in my city at that time (since I'm from India).

The PC did well for all modern games running them well over 40 FPS with everything maxed out at 1440X900. I felt the need of adding an additional Cooling fan in case and thus added a rear fan to make it run cooler.

Last week, Accidentally, my bro switched off the Power switch of the switchboard while the PC was on. It was still on since the UPS was ready for the backup. Soon as he switched off the switch, the PC hung. No movable mouse, live display on the screen (The screen did not blank out, btw).

I restarted the PC. CPU lights came on but I found out that it failed to show up the display, not even the BIOS.

I opened up the Case and removed the GPU (9800 GT), restarted again and found out that now it worked fine except Windows 7 was crashing (BSOD) due to some Intel display driver issues.

I have reinstalled Windows on a separate partition and am now only with Intel HD graphics. The PC runs fine except there are some random restarts after prolonged usage or while watching HD movies.

(When the GPU was plugged in initially, I saw the fan of GPU to run fine except that screen didn't display anything. No signs of burnt hardware anywhere)

From the looks of it, it either looks like some fault in the GPU or dying & incapable PSU. Maybe the 400W PSU is just incapable of handling so much juice of the GPU?

My rig-

Intel Core i3 530 @2.93 GHz
Intel DH55TC Mobo
2X2 GB DDR3 RAM (@1333MHz)
Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA + 160 GB Hitachi Deskstar
GPU:Sparkle Nvidia 9800 GT (Currently removed from Case)
PSU:400 W (default with the Case)
Sony Lightscribe DVD Writer.
Fans:1 Rear Fan

Thanks in advance!

 

[PreferLinux]

I'd suspect the PSU, as the ones that come with cases are normally junk.

 

[ghnader hsmithot]

force or sudden reboot can have a damaging effect on the magnets in the harddrive..

 

[PreferLinux]

A sudden reboot could cause data corruption on the HDD. A shock could cause a head crash too, which would do damage.

 

[machvelocy]

I'd suspect the PSU, as the ones that come with cases are normally junk.

^ this

from my own experience, i once built a rig (my first one, sometime in '04) with a radeon x700, with a PSU that comes with the case. it says it have a 450w output, the hardware seller already gives me warning about the quality of case's "bonus" PSU and sadly i ignore him (thinking that its just his marketing strategy ). once everything is on, i often experiencing a sudden reboot.

problem solved when i bought a branded 430w psu. from that point, i realize the importance of PSU quality for a gaming pc