PSU died - did it kill my video card?

[n1teowl]

I recently had problems with my video card (artifacting when entering 3D games). I confirmed this by using Sandra to test the processor and RAM, everything seemed OK. When I ran 3DMark, the computer screen went blank. I could still view the desktop, so I thought I would RMA my video card when my new one came. It came today, and as I was ready to put it in, I noticed my computer screen had frozen with more weird artifacting. I thought "hmmmm...", and turned the computer off, then back on. This time I got to the windows XP loading screen and it reset itself. When I rebooted it a third time, the internal PC speaker starting a kind of "nee-naw" siren sound, so I immediately turned it off again. I then noticed a smell that made me cringe - smoke. It seemed to be coming from the video card. I shut it off and pulled the video card out. I thought that it had finally kicked the bucket. I put my new Radeon 9700 card in and tried to turn it on again. This time the fans came on for about 1 second and shut right off. This is as far as it gets. Now for my questions: Does the PSU sound dead? Was this my problem the whole time (at least until the smoke)? Could a bad power supply have killed my video card? Could anything else be fried? It was an el-cheapo PSU that came with my case (the last time I do that). I plan to replace it with a 400W enermax or something like that. Any advice?

 

[Crashman]

You can get a 350W Fortron for $32 at Newegg, that offers similar capacity to the Enermax 400W unit. Get a power supply right away to minimize downtime, and try it!

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