So uh....what could have caused my gaming PC to spontaneously combust?

Reminds me of a time my roommates PC randomly caught on fire during a game of C&C Generals, to which his response was to quit the match, close the game, and then calmly navigate the mouse towards the start menu and patiently wait for it to shutdown. We just sat there in silence throughout.
 
1. Remove the GPU
2. Plug HDMI into motherboard

If boots: GPU is dead
If not: Motherboard/CPU/RAM is dead

3. Try a new CPU - It's cheaper than buying a board to buy a $15 CPU, like a used Celeron/Pentium. If it works, you're all good. If not, it's only 15$.

If boots: CPU is dead
If not: Motherboard/RAM is dead

4. Try new RAM - Get a 1GB/2GB stick, they're also cheap

If boots: RAM is dead
If not: Motherboard is dead


The best way is to make your way to a Microcenter and pay them the money to find the problem - they have all the parts you'd need.

Following these instructions could see you toss a perfectly good GPU, you declare it dead without testing it? Your post confuses me.
 
Update for this thread:

I discovered that there's a PC repair shop near me. Instead of buying or finding other parts to triage things one at a time, they did a full diagnosis for $35.

They determined that the motherboard is fried, but the CPU, RAM, and GPU are all good.


So...who wants the CPU / RAM / GPU? :-)
 
Take a look at the boards. Should be pretty easy to narrow down the culprit with a voltmeter.

EDIT: oh OP got things taken care of.
Motherboards can be pretty cheap. Why not repair it?
 
Update for this thread:

I discovered that there's a PC repair shop near me. Instead of buying or finding other parts to triage things one at a time, they did a full diagnosis for $35.

They determined that the motherboard is fried, but the CPU, RAM, and GPU are all good.


So...who wants the CPU / RAM / GPU? :-)

Other than the GPU, your components are pretty decent.

They'd still make a robust gaming PC, especially if you add in a newer GPU.

Might have to overclock the CPU though.
 
My PSU died a couple months ago. I knew things were weird because I started to smell something burning coming from computer. Then it just shut off on me. I quickly unplugged everything and opened it up. I used my nose as an indicator as to what was burning and sure enough it was the power supply. Luckily every other component was fine once I installed a new PSU.
 
Other than the GPU, your components are pretty decent.

They'd still make a robust gaming PC, especially if you add in a newer GPU.

Might have to overclock the CPU though.

I'm pretty sure the CPU - even overclocked - would be a big bottleneck. Wouldn't it? I can't find benchmarks to confirm.

I'm not sure what motherboard to get if I do though. The one I have isn't available anywhere. Anything from this list?
 
I had that same psu on a way weaker build and it stopped outputting proper power then became a static bomb (gave me a shock) after barely a year. It's garbage.
 
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