Argh! PC building isn't good for my bloodpressure!

[frythecpuofbender]

So my uncle is over with his broken PC (which I built years ago).
Says the thing just stopped working after some electric sparks came out of the front panel USB or something like that (but you can't trust the guy and his recollection of events AT ALL)

So we changed the chassis...nothing.
We bought a new PSU...still nothing.
Went and bought a new mobo...still nothing.

ARGH

Now it has to be either the P4 3,0Ghz CPU (which looks totally fine from outside) or the RAM, never would've guessed this before starting to blindly buy new shit.
Tomorrow I'll dismantle my old P4 3,2Ghz that I know works, and see if the CPU really is the culprit. Never had this before that a CPU just doesn't work anymore.
Is it even possible that a fried CPU can just totally short circuit a system? Mobo lamp doesn't light up, no fans spinning, you can't even hear the static crackle inside the PSU when you connect the power.
So weird. When my CPU and ram (which I know are 100% ok) won't work tomorrow, I'm gonna abandon PC building for good and throw the whole thing out the window. SPOOKY

 

[Ksyder]

Hopefully that system doesn't destroy your known good parts...Obviously it sounds like a dead cpu- but usually I'd think that the system just won't boot when the CPU is bad, I've personally never seen a cpu just fail during operation but I highly doubt it would short out the system... but anythings possible...

 

[jackschmittusa]

Bad drive? I have seen both optical and hd that fry with a power surge keep a rig from turning on.