Please help confirm my system is dead :(

[mcveigh]

This is my HTPC. It's several years old.
specs:
mobo- Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H ver 1.0 (780G chipset)
cpu- AMD 5000+BE
mem- 2x2GB crucial DDR2
onboard video

A couple months ago I got a new case, a silverstone GD05 (my old one was 10 years old)
with the new case the power supply was on the other side of the motherboard and my old powersupply wouldn't reach. So I ran out to the local tiger direct store and got a no name power supply. just to get it up and running and keep the wife happy.
It ran fine for about a week and then started having random shutdowns. sometimes it would turn off 3x a day and other times it would go a week running fine but the problem was getting more and more frequent.
I suspected the cheap power supply. (yes it's plugged into a UPS).

I finally ordered a new powersupply (corsair CX430M) and a new CPU cooler in case it was running hot. (coolermaster gemini II M4).

I brought everything into work tonight to switch things out.
I did. now it won't boot. the fans will spin, the power LED is on but nothing on the monitor.

this case does NOT have a speaker so I can't hear beep codes.


what I've tried:
booting with no hard drives, no add in cards, only 1 stick of ram.
I've tried every ram slot.
taken the motherboard back out of the case. and tried booting it while it's sitting on cardboard, I did this with the old power supply as well.
tried different know working monitors hooked up via VGA and DVI.

my only thought is that this CPU cooler has a metal backplate, insulated with paper on it. maybe it's grounding something out trealted to the CPU???
or maybe it's dead

any ideas or suggestions are welcome! :$:whiste:

 

[paul878]

Reset the bios, and re-seat the cpu.

 

[mcveigh]

did both...nothing

 

[Bubbaleone]

Just a quick check: back plate (E) is mounted with the insulating tape facing the bottom of the board, and four rubber pads (I) are sandwiched between the retention plates (C or D) and the top of board? If so; you may have over-tightened one or all of the four mounting nuts, causing the retention plate/s to make metal-to-metal contact.

 

[mcveigh]

Yeah I double checked it.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Did you have any difficulty removing the old heatsink from the CPU (hardened thermal paste)? You might pull the CPU again and use a magnifier to inspect for any bent pins, or tiny bits of old thermal paste that may have gotten into the socket.

 

[mcveigh]

well I took off everything again. reinspected the CPU, it still looked fine.
put it back on and I get to the bios now.

I wish I knew what it was. I'm adding hard drives now and will see if it boots.

thanks everyone!!!