Fried Motherboard or Something Else?

[imported_Dhaval00]

Guys, need some serious help! I have troubleshoot my PC for a 1000 times now, and can't find the culprit. It's a long and weird story...I left my computer ON while I was in college all day long. The wheather was fudged up and it had already knocked out my cable modem and my telephone system. When I came back home, my PC was in a weird state - The HD LED was lit up and so were the other system LED's and fans (excluding the Power LED, and by other LED's I meant the LED's on my case fans). The hard drives weren't spinning though and the system wasn't doing anything @ all. SO I went ahead and hit the Power switch, then the Reset switch, but all to no avail (Mind you, the LED's and the fans were all ON). Now I went ahead and turned off the computer using the main PSU switch. That turned off my computer, but it has been out ever since. I have switched to a new power supply, but that hasn't helped me either. I took out the motherboard, and setup the system on a wooden plate outside the case. That hasn't worked as well. All this time though, the green LED on my motherboard did light up whenever it was connected to an active source (I observed it was not as bright as it was when I built the system a month ago; probabaly I am seeing colors :s). So I took the phone, and called up our friends @ ASUS to get an RMA #. I will ship out the motherboard soon, but there are some issues here that I need to know from the experts.
Do you guys think that the surge knocked out any other components in my system? I read somewhere a couple of years back that the surge can travel all over motherboard killing everything in its path!!?!?! Is there anything else that I could try...obviously that will have to wait until I receive a confirmation from ASUS that my motherboard, indeed, is fried.

Pentium 4 630 @ 3.0 GHz
OCZ Performance Series PC2 5400 Dual Channel 1 GHz
ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI-E
Power Supply (Older): Enermax 565VE FMA @ 535 Watts
Power Supply (Newer, for testing): Antec NeoPower 480 @ 480 Watts
Creative Audigy 2 ZS
Plextor DVD+/-RW 716A
Dual Seagate Barracudas @ 120 GB

Let me know! Any input during such grievous times will be invaluable. Thanks.

PS: Don't pick on me for the choice of components - the system belongs to my elder brother who is an Intel fan.

 

[Fern]

With ligtning, anything and everything is possible.

If your lucky, it's just one of the PCI cards. I'd try the mobo with just cpu (+ HS & F), ram and gfx cards. No drives, no cards. See if it works.

 

[hemiram]

My friend's PC got nailed during a storm through the phone line. It blew up the surge protector on the line, and cooked the cord and melted the plug where it went into the modem. After the power came back on, it booted up fine. Nothing wrong, except the modem wouldn't respond. I came over with a spare, and when we took the old modem out, it was obvious why it couldn't dial, there was nothing left of the back of it! The plug was there, but the traces on the PC board from the plug to the parts on the board were gone, vaporized. The funny part of it was, is that in control panel, the modem passed diagnostics!

We put my spare in, and it fired up and dialed. He was really lucky.

My lightning strike wasn't quite as bad as his, but my damage was worse. The surge blew my UPS up, and the modem too. The PC itself survived though, and still works.

About 25 years ago, my friend's CB antenna got hit, it blew fiberglass for about 1/4 mile around and blew the top off every chip inside the radio.

You never know what's it's going to do..

 

[Jiggz]

I sincerely believe the mobo and maybe including the CPU is probably fried. The PSU was left on and when the mobo got fried, it cannot turn off/on the system anymore. When you decided to turn off the main switch, the PSU was turned off. And since the mobo is already fried you will not be able to turn it back on unless you jumper the PSU. The Reset and Power On switch ion the front of the case are all connected to the mobo and will not affect the PSU if the mobo is fried. That's why you have to do a hard reset by turning off the main power switch on the psu.