Dead mobo or other component

[rebelit]

Hi all,
I have a striker extreme II with a q6600 and nVidia GTX 8800, it is not overclocked. The other night at about 3am my gf woke me up because the computer was making a loud high pitched wailing noise.

It wouldn't turn off or reset from the front panel so I just had to turn off the power at the back.

In the morning I tried turning it on. The MB lights come on, all the fans & disks spin up but nothing gets to the monitor. It doesn't sound as if it is getting through the POST screen. I have some still packaged DDR 2 lying around so I replaced that, but nothing changed.

My assumption was that it was something on the mobo (the diagnostic LCD on the rear panel had some partial garbage on it. Nothing sensical. The front panel power and reset buttons won't work.

The graphics card though, appears to have a tiny bit of water damage on the pcb but there is no sign of any damage to any other components in the case. If the graphics card failed would that stop the POST screen?

Any ideas or info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Emphacy]

Graphics card would more than likely bring up a POST, not stop it, so you would hear beeps and stuff, or lights come on.
High pitched sounds usually come from PSU's before they're gonna go in some cases. Have you tested your PSU/ replaced it with another one.

Just because lights and things come on, fans spin doesn't mean it's working properly. On the other hand, it could also be the motherboard. Your best option is to try another PSU and/or test it with a multimeter.

It'll be one of the two if there's no POST. Memory wouldn't affect POST, other than error.

 

[rebelit]

Thanks for the confirmation & advice. I don't currently have a 2nd PSU to try, but on the Asus forum they were saying if you boot up without memory you should get the error beep during post and that if you don't get that it's likely to be the CPU.

The PSU is a two year old Thermaltake 1200w I do hope it's not faulty, I really like it. :/

I decided to upgrade anyway and have bought a crosshair IV, Phenom II and 4gb of corsair ram. I'll have it built tomorrow, fingers crossed that it was the mb or cpu!!

[Edit]
I decided I couldn't wait and put the new components together - passes post (with display) Now I just need a SATA optical or an IDE to SATA converter <sigh>