Is my computer dead?

[Hank Scorpio]

In short, today I heard a "pop" inside my computer and it immediately shut down. I smelled something burning.

I went out and bought a new PSU, installed it, but now I'm having issues getting the thing running.

Basically, I turn on the system, and the fans all start spinning - and after a minute or two it all just shuts off. To make things especially annoying, my monitor goes into power saving mode whenever it is connected to the tower, and my keyboard and mouse don't seem to be getting any power/signal from the motherboard.

Basically, I'm not sure if there's some prompt being displayed when I start up the system, and even if there is, I can't see or respond to it...

...so I have no idea what is going on.

 

[Couperin47]

In short, today I heard a "pop" inside my computer and it immediately shut down. I smelled something burning.

I went out and bought a new PSU, installed it, but now I'm having issues getting the thing running.

Basically, I turn on the system, and the fans all start spinning - and after a minute or two it all just shuts off. To make things especially annoying, my monitor goes into power saving mode whenever it is connected to the tower, and my keyboard and mouse don't seem to be getting any power/signal from the motherboard.

Basically, I'm not sure if there's some prompt being displayed when I start up the system, and even if there is, I can't see or respond to it...

...so I have no idea what is going on.

 
Motherboard is blown...It's dead Jim. How old ? Details... perhaps cpu and memory can be salvaged... if your dealing with DDR2 or earlier.... time for a whole new build.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

 
Motherboard is blown...It's dead Jim. How old ? Details... perhaps cpu and memory can be salvaged... if your dealing with DDR2 or earlier.... time for a whole new build.

 
This is the motherboard: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55D/
 
It's between 3 and 5 years old... not quite sure exactly.

 

[GregHarris]

It doesn't post?  If so, your board is fried.

 

[Couperin47]

 
This is the motherboard: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55D/
 
It's between 3 and 5 years old... not quite sure exactly.

 
Oh great the oddball 1156 socket, that went nowehere, unlike the 1150 and 1155...at least your DDR memory is reusable. Time for a new build.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

 
Oh great the oddball 1156 socket, that went nowehere, unlike the 1150 and 1155...at least your DDR memory is reusable. Time for a new build.

 
I take it you mean I'm screwed on the CPU too? And I'm not even sure on the memory. I took out both DDR sticks, and got beeps when I tried to turn it on. Put one DDR stick back in, and I got it to turn on and stay on... still no picture/keyboard/mouse though. Kind of wish I still had a VGA cable to see if that would get me a picture.

 

[Alligator]

 
I take it you mean I'm screwed on the CPU too? And I'm not even sure on the memory. I took out both DDR sticks, and got beeps when I tried to turn it on. Put one DDR stick back in, and I got it to turn on and stay on... still no picture/keyboard/mouse though. Kind of wish I still had a VGA cable to see if that would get me a picture.

 
Let me throw this out there.

I had a similar experience a few years back - a very noticeable popping sound, followed by an abrupt shutdown.
 
Turns out that the clip holding the heat sync onto the CPU snapped. The heat sink wasn't quite on the CPU, the CPU was getting too hot, and the system was shutting down.  
 
*Some* but not all of what you describe was going on here too (prior to replacing the clip).  Enough that it's worth looking at the thing before taking more extreme measures.  Poke the heat sink and see if the thing moves.  
 
 
All that said, the burning smell is a bad sign.  

 

[Hank Scorpio]

 
Let me throw this out there.

I had a similar experience a few years back - a very noticeable popping sound, followed by an abrupt shutdown.
 
Turns out that the clip holding the heat sync onto the CPU snapped. The heat sink wasn't quite on the CPU, the CPU was getting too hot, and the system was shutting down.  
 
*Some* but not all of what you describe was going on here too (prior to replacing the clip).  Enough that it's worth looking at the thing before taking more extreme measures.  Poke the heat sink and see if the thing moves.  
 
 
All that said, the burning smell is a bad sign.  

 
Actually, the heat sink was loose, and one of the clips seemed partially busted. I wonder if that caused the PSU to overload and the MB to fry somehow. Either way, fixing it did nothing, unfortunately.

 

[Couperin47]

The burning smell is the dead giveaway, something on the mb went, probably a capacitor and that probably burned out some resistors. Modern Intel processors can't do thermal runaway, if they overheat (as if the cooler breaks away etc. crowbar circuits simply cut the current and they shutdown), otoh when something shorts out on the mb, abnormal high voltage can get anywhere: gets to the wrong pins of the cpu and it's done, same to memory etc. best guess: your memory is OK and being DDR3 you can reuse it. The cpu MAY be OK, but the 1156 socket was the 'shortest lived' option Intel used in the last 10 years (lucky you). The only one listed at Newegg is a refurb of a crummy HP from...years ago... so your cpu is a dead end...I'd list it on eBay, explain that it's untested (which everyone will understand) and you can probably get a few bucks from someone with an old 1156 mb who wants to take a flier on this. Odds are your video card is still OK, you should be able to plug that into someone else's puter to test... if it's good, it gets reused.. if it's dead that's a sign high voltage leaked all over the mb when it blew and probably nuked everything in sight.

 

[Guero]

pcpartpicker is your friend if you are buying computer parts. From the looks of it, the cheapest mobo replacement is about $130 bucks. For comparison, you can buy a G3220 and a decent B85 mobo for that. Now, they will not be super high end, but they will operate fine for most things. You won't be overclocking, or pulling great numbers on programs that need a lot of cores (like extreme gaming, video rendering, multitasking), but since you didn't say what you do with this computer or what cpu you currently were using, that might not matter much. 
 
The older generation can be found, but it cost just as much as the newer generations and is in shorter supply. How much you play around with replacing, is between you and your wallet depth. 

 

[AlNipper49]

In my experience -- if you smell or see smoke from a PC then get rid of everything except the RAM and the hard drives.  PCs are dirt cheap these days.  It's not worth the countless hours of frustration, particularly on a PC that isn't necessarily the newest or best.

 

[Alligator]

 
Actually, the heat sink was loose, and one of the clips seemed partially busted. I wonder if that caused the PSU to overload and the MB to fry somehow. Either way, fixing it did nothing, unfortunately.

 
Ah, sorry to hear it.  I got lucky with mine, thought maybe you would too.  
 
In fact, I oversimplified in my first response to avoid confusing matters.  My computer didn't start shutting down until the following morning.  Pretty much, thermal grease was all that was holding the heat sink to the CPU after the pop.  Probably slid too far off over night.  As I said ... lucky.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

I'm not devastated over the loss, as I wanted to upgrade for quite some time to begin with, but I'm just hoping I can get the contents off my old hard drive without too much headache... I have a USB-SATA cable with a power cord to do the job, but I've been told it's gonna be a nightmare because of Windows file permissions... 
 
The other troubling thing is that I built my new PC last night, and I had to reinstall Windows already, because something corrupted the registry and I couldn't get past Startup Repair. The issue seemed to trigger when I did one of those Windows updates that randomly prompts. 

 

[AlNipper49]

I'm not devastated over the loss, as I wanted to upgrade for quite some time to begin with, but I'm just hoping I can get the contents off my old hard drive without too much headache... I have a USB-SATA cable with a power cord to do the job, but I've been told it's gonna be a nightmare because of Windows file permissions... 
 
The other troubling thing is that I built my new PC last night, and I had to reinstall Windows already, because something corrupted the registry and I couldn't get past Startup Repair. The issue seemed to trigger when I did one of those Windows updates that randomly prompts. 

It really depends with regards to permissions but as long as your intent is to just copy everything off there are like ten thousand ways to skin that cat. Some better than others of course , particularly depending on the situation.