am i shorting my board?

[jezabel]

does anyone know if there's a way to determine if a motherboard is being shorted or not? i've had a series of problems with my system since changing cases, which i've blamed on a variety of hardware components, and i've come to the conclusion that they're possibly all the result of either a bad power supply or a shorted m/b. the p/s seems to be working in a second system, so i'd like to check if the board is shorted.

 

[mechBgon]

Can you pull it out of the case and try running it like that, or is it something that strikes rarely enough that this isn't practical as a troubleshooting step?