Marc Shapiro <mshapiro_42@yahoo.com> said:
I can claim firsthand experience with exactly that. Box overheated.
Fried capacitors. Required new motherboard and CPU. Fortunately I
was able to get a similar MB, only slight upgrade, so I was able to
use my old memory and didn't have to replace that, too. If the
problem is the power supply (mine was) it is much cheaper to replace
the PS now than the MB in a few weeks. Other fans and heatsinks are
still less expensive than a new CPU (and, possibly, MB).
I had much the same experience but my loss was total. That brings up
the question of how to tell if the PS is going out. My motherboard had
fan, temp and voltage sensors that I /finally/ got working but the PS
didn't seem to be represented in those. Are there physical hints
pre-death (enough pre-death for box salvage) for a power supply?