Any way to determine which component has failed?

[mrflint]

I'm pretty sure my board is fried, but can't be certain it's just the board. The system will not even power on anymore, the only sign of life I get is a blue led on my board when the power supply switch is turned on. No fans, no beeps, nothing.

I have stripped everything down to the bare essentials, with just the processor, 1 stick of ram and the PSU. Makes no difference. I have tried multiple PSUs and I get the same result each time. It really only leaves me with the board or the CPU as the problem at this point, but I would really like to be able to know what caused the issue in the first place.

I can order a new board and see if that works, with the risk of frying that one as well since I don't even know what caused this in the first place. I could take this to a technician to see if they can determine the exact issue on their bench. Lastly, I could just ditch the whole system and build a new one entirely, which is obviously the most costly option.

Is there any way to pin down what the issue is without the risk of frying something else? I would like to just order a new board and try that, but am concerned about the possibility of one of my components being the source of this problem. I don't want to ruin a new piece of hardware. So I'm leaning towards taking it to a tech, but will they even be able to do anything... at $60 per hour, I might add.

System:
EVGA x58 tri-sli
i7 920
6gb Corsair XMS3 RAM
Radeon HD7950 3gb
EVGA GTX285 1.5gb
Silverstone 1000w PSU
4x WD Hard Drives

 

[Feldmarschall]

There is no way to determine that with fried board unofrtunately.

Can you tell me simptoms which occured prior to failure?

 

[mrflint]

There is no way to determine that with fried board unofrtunately.

Can you tell me simptoms which occured prior to failure?

Hi, thanks for responding.
I had previously created a thread which described the issues I was having. You can see it here for the description. Basically, the PC was randomly shutting off, it got more frequent over a period of about 2 days, then it simply ceased to boot.

A few days ago I discovered a sound in my breaker box in the basement which revealed some inadequate grounding. Had an electrician over to fix it, he mentioned the ground leads weren't properly fastened the way they should've been and it was causing the breaker to not trip when overloaded, but couldn't verify if it had anything to do with my computer dying. The circuit was the very one my PC was plugged in to. If it's unrelated it'd be an odd coincidence.

 

[Feldmarschall]

It's possible (but less probable) that this is cause of PC failure but in that case your PSU would be dead. PSU will survive great overload from input power and even if they can't handle input overload they won't let it through to motherboard in most cases (at least not good PSU's). That's why lot of PC's survive even indirect thunder strike.

Use voltmeter and check your outputs on PSU (power it with paperclip). This should give you a good start. If PSU is ok then simply buy new board. Board is dead, that's sure if PSU isn't. Also, check will it start without CPU altough even fans would work if CPU is problem.

 

[mrflint]

The PSU works fine, I tested it in a separate system so it must be the board. I suppose it may be worth trying with the CPU removed, but as you said, none of the fans are spinning. It's an EVGA board with a lifetime limited warranty. Hopefully that's worth something upon RMA. If not, the cost of replacing only the board isn't such a bad deal after 4 years of use.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Feldmarschall]

RMA it then. Since there is no way that that PSU caused mailfunction. It's sipmly board

Make them give you new one and stand your ground, don't let them get out of this )