MB or CPU?

[rcayers]

My computer went south a few days ago and I got new stuff at Fry's and built a replacement. OK so far. But I have been wondering if I can revive the old one for a spare. Is there a way to tell if my problem is with the mother board or the CPU? The MB is an ASUS A8M2N and the CPU an AMD Athlon (forget the speed at the moment).

Any help appreciated

 

[SonnyDaze]

How did it go South? What happened? Did it just stop? Go up in flames? Sparks? Sizzles?

Only way is to test the mobo with a compatable known working CPU and vice versa.

But it's hard to tell without more info. It could very well be the PSU, bad RAM, STB HDD....

 

[Denithor]

It's pretty damn hard to kill a CPU.

Give us more detail with the symptoms & what you've tried and we can probably help you figure out what's going on.

If it wasn't sparks/fire/smoke/etc then you may just have a single dead component that will probably be easy to replace.

 

[Jiggz]

Assuming you didn't do anything out of the ordinary, the most likely culprit is a bad PSU, mobo or video. When you turn on the system watch for the following symptoms:
1. LED lights, are they on.
2. Case fans, are they spinning
3. HDD do you hear it spin or whine?
4. Video, any display?