Yesterday, Sat, july 29th in the year 2007, I began having horrible lag issues centered around World of Warcraft (no idea if its related), while switching characters and realms to see if this was a problem I was having with just my realm (I was not lagging outside of game at all, streamed video multiple times, ran speed tests, everything was fine), I encountered a huge graphical glitch out that pixelated my entire screen while flashing random colours making the game unplayable. I exited only to find that my desktop was victim to this error as well (though not to the same extent, it was messed up, but still generally visable and I was able to reboot).
I might add that the lag issue had stopped right after the graphical errors started. The graphical errors continued to happen after a duration of playtime, which lead me to try installing new drivers, which I did and everything was fine for about 10 minutes until it happened again, which lead me to believe it was a video card problem (most likely overheating as it seemed to happen after playing for a few minutes).
So as my comp had not been cleaned in awhile (and I do mean "awhile"), I decided to clean it out and have a look at the card. Upon inspection I found a small wall of dust in between my cards exhaust fan and its heatsink (radeon x850xt card, the fan pulls air off the heatsink and blows it out the back of the comp to cool it) blocking the cooling. Now the blockage was located in a place I couldn't access unless I took the entire card apart (which although I am fairly comp hardware literate is well beyond me). So I decided to replace it with my old radeon 9800pro (only used 6 months, perfectly fine).
Yet the graphical error persisted even after installing the other video card (it did happen in a slightly different fashion at first, but ended up the same after awhile).
So now I assume it is some other form of overheating (I had noticed my cpu had a high temp when I checked the bios during one of these many reboots) so I decided to pull my old ghetto style setup (which had worked for me before very well) by taking off the heatsink/fan and leaving the side of the case open with a large room fan directly on it a few inches away.
Now when I tried this the first thing I did was go into bios to check my cpu's temp with this "ghetto" setup. I found the cpu was down well below the level it had been before by at least 15+ degrees and was well within normal operating standards. My Cpu (from what I have read, should not be above 70 degrees celsius) was sitting around 48-50degrees (still high but it was up near 65 before I setup the room fan and removed the heatsink/fan). While sitting on the BIOS screen, I again encountered the graphical error (which really scared me) and upon the next reboot my computer basically "flatlined" as in, no bios screen, no motherboard check screen, would not boot into windows, simply just a black screen with nothing loading and continued to do so even after attempts at leaving it off for different durations.
So case in point I feel somthing in my computer broke. I don't specifically know why or how, I have very large doubts this was any form of virus as I had just ran an AV check at some point when the errors started happening and I use a good firewall. It obviously was NOT the video card as swapping in another perfectly working card didn't fix the problem. I have had ram problems before and this doesn't seem like one (although I can't rule that out totally). I feel it is either my motherboard is dead and or my cpu possibly overheated and has died because of it (although the cooling should have fixed that issue, it still could have fried itself when it might have overheated previously).
My problem is this, I have no way to test any of this, I don't have access to any other comp or comp parts and am unable to swap around hardware to isolate the part, wether it be the motherboard or the cpu (or possibly even the ram).
I'm posting this on an "old" computer (not compatible in any way with the hardware on the one I'm posting about) and would appreciate any help , suggestions or ideas in regards to this.
Specs are as follows :
p4 3.0ghz w/HT
Asus P4P800se motherboard
1gig corsair pc3200 ddr ram
Radeon x850xt pe / (radeon 9800pro all in wonder, only used ^ as mentioned)
120gig sata HD (forget what brand, doubt that matters)
550watt power supply
*onboard sound
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