Is my motherboard toast, or is it the CPU?

ShellShock · 13 Oct 2018 at 10:32

Something happened during the night that tripped RCDs in my electric main board, seems to have killed my landline phone and my PC.

When I switch on the PC:

The CPU cooler fan spins for a second only.
The sysfan spins continuously.
Red leds come on on the motherboard.
Power led comes on.
GPU fan spins.
No boot, no bios beeps.

So I am not sure if it the motherboard or the CPU that is faulty. Is the simplest thing to replace them both?

LuckyBenski · 13 Oct 2018 at 10:59

Hard to say. I personally think it unlikely the CPU died but not the motherboard, but with power spikes all bets are off in a way.

Is your landline phone mains powered? Phone lines are powered separately from the mains supply so if that died too, sounds like you had quite an event!

ShellShock · 13 Oct 2018 at 11:08

Yes the landline was plugged into the mains. The phone was dead immediately after the surge, which tripped two RCDs on the same circuit. I did not try the PC for a few days later and found it dead too. Looks like it is upgrade time. Pity Intel have just hiked up their prices.

LuckyBenski · 13 Oct 2018 at 11:21

ShellShock said:
Yes the landline was plugged into the mains. The phone was dead immediately after the surge, which tripped two RCDs on the same circuit. I did not try the PC for a few days later and found it dead too. Looks like it is upgrade time. Pity Intel have just hiked up their prices.

I would test the parts first, depending on your motherboard there may be a cheap CPU you can try.

Jamin280672 · 13 Oct 2018 at 18:26

ShellShock said:
Something happened during the night that tripped RCDs in my electric main board, seems to have killed my landline phone and my PC.

When I switch on the PC:

The CPU cooler fan spins for a second only.

The sysfan spins continuously.

Red leds come on on the motherboard.

Power led comes on.

GPU fan spins.

No boot, no bios beeps.

So I am not sure if it the motherboard or the CPU that is faulty. Is the simplest thing to replace them both?

Id try the CPU 1st too, however, don't rule out that it could be the power supply, after all, that would have taken the brunt of the hit, do you have another you can try or a friends you could borrow ?

BluD · 14 Oct 2018 at 03:22

I had a power surge many years ago that killed everything in my PC except the GPU and CPU. Like the others guys said just check your parts in another pc one at a time if ya can or take it into a PC shop and get them to test it. Power supplies have probably come along way since it happened to me though so i would hope a lot more has survived for you.