O/T: Dead pc question

I came home from work a couple days ago, found out power had been out and back on, main computer(HP a720n) is dead. It was plugged into a surge protector. Followed troubleshooting tips to test power supply, no response at all, figured that was it. Bought new power supply, just installed it, pc is still dead. When I hit the switch, I can hear the tiniest click from the rear of the board. Turn it off, wait about 10 seconds and hear a small chirp from the same area. Guessing the board is fried also.

Now for the questions: It"s an ASUS socket A board, thinking of buying the same board again. From what I know, this is a decent brand. Anyone had a bad experience and recommend something else? Other boards that are compatible but have better performance specs?

If I buy a bare-bones system and put my drives in it, I"ve lost the money just spent on the new power supply. If I buy a replacement board for my current system, I don"t gain anything in terms of performance.

Suggestions and opinions are appreciated.

Thanks for your time,

Anthony
Motherboard specs page

Ours has a switch on the back of the computer, turn it off for a minute or so and then turn it back on.

Hi Anthoney: I will suggest asking at http://forums.techguy.org before doing anything slse. I have used them for maybe 10 years except this year. Some real sharp people there. First ask how to determine what is wrong with your system before buying any more hardware? good luck.. ag
techguy website

how old is the computer? if it has any age on it then i believe i would go ahead and get a bare bones kit. can you take the power supply back for a return? also you might have something else keeping it from turning on(memory, or other hardware). the guys at newbies might have some good suggestions also, the address is http://www.newbiesforum.com/phpbb3/ and they are friendly and helpful.

frank

I have a couple of ASUS Socket A boards and I am not that impressed with them. I have had better luck with Intel and Microstar boards.

That board spec page has information on resetting the startup and set-up specs. You might try clearing the CMOS and resetting everything before spending money. Read the instructions before doing that.

Do you have any insurance that will cover this? Or the power company. Some surge protectors guarantee to protect equipment or they will replace. Maybe... Dave

Look for swelled capacitors on the motherboard. I have seen several older computers lately that worked fine until they were powered off. They would not power back on and of them all had bad capacitors.
Leaking Capacitors

CMOS battery dead??

That's a fairly low-performance motherboard by today's standards. The only reason to use the same board would be to keep your old processor and memory, which are now suspect, as well as maintain compatibility with your other components. You may have trouble even finding that motherboard.

If it was me, I'd bite the bullet and replace the motherboard, CPU and memory. Basically keep your case, power supply, keyboard and drives. However, there are some caveats:

1. Your current board has an AGP graphics card port. Most newer motherboards only support PCI-Express graphics cards. No big deal; you can get a much better graphics card than you have now for less than a hundred bucks.

2. Newer chipsets don't support the older PATA (aka IDE) disk drives, although the motherboard manufacturers usually add on PATA support. If you only have SATA drives, no problem, but if your drives are PATA it's something to watch out for. SATA (serial ATA) drives have a narrow data cable about 3/8 of an inch wide, while PATA (parallel ATA) drives use a much wider data cable.

3. If you're running a newer version of windows, you'll probably have issues when Windows discovers your hardware has changed. I'm not sure the whole process you have to go through to fix that; I'm not a Windows guy.

ASUS has a very solid reputation, but there are other good motherboards as well. I have an MSI board with which I'm very happy. I suggest buying from Newegg; their prices are good and their web site makes it simple to get everything you need.
Motherboards at Newegg

I would seriously consider the time and risk to be the deciding factors. A new box with no monitor or keyboard would be in the 300 range. and be duo core with capability to run 7 with no issues. 7 is so superior to XP that it is way worth it. (I operate 120 PCs with University students, and have operated the computer you have for 6 years. It was great in its day. Jim