Fried or Not Fried???

Greetings everyone!

Well heres the deal!

My Younger brother ( The Engineer )has an emachine that he wanted to soup up for his son. He bought a high dollar video card or so he says off the President of his company. Well he plugged the new video card in while the machine was powered up. Well it looks like he may have fried a few things including the new DDR2 Ram, Powersupply and no telling what else. He is now wanting me to help him out. I figure the best thing I could do for him at this time is kick his a oops nevermind that. He wants me to try and figure all what all might be fried and what may still be ok. I'm wanting info from some of the more experienced techs on what would be the best plan of attack??

Motherboard:
It looks like the model number is RC410-M Rev: 1.1

Memory:
I have 2 chips. The first one is from PQI. The info is
PC2-4200 2 GB Single Channel
PQI24200-2GSB

The second is Oxcco.
512MB PC2-4200-533MHz
P/N: X259-E63GU-D(or O - it's hard to tell)AB1R
S/N E0645115060

PC INFO:
eMachine T3516
Intel Celeron D Processor 352
3.20GHz | 533MHzFSB | 512 KB L2 Cache


Respectfully
RezRunner

 

The best (and maybe the only) way to start testing is to have some extra parts that are KNOWN to be 100% healthy. This would include a power supply, memory, video card, and CPU. If the PC was on-board video, then you can do without the video card (but it can help if the on-board video chip is thought to be dead), and CPUs don't fail very often so you might be able to skip that.

I have REAL tough time trying to wrap my brain around this:

:innocent rolleyes

 

i would guess if anything is fried, it would be the motherboard....the ram and everything else might be ok...

 

Yep I agree , and if he is the "engineer" as you say RezRunner then why did he tried to add a graphics card while the PC is on?

Surely "engineers" you turn the PC off then add any required parts or upgrades.

Tell him not to be silly like that again

 

What I would do here is strip out all PCI cards and unhitch the Hard drive and CD Roms and switch off the Power Supply if you have one if not remove the 3pin plug at the wall socket. Put the 3 pin power on and see if you can detect ANY light on the motherboard (of course you will need the side panel off for this) If you cant see any plug your DSL Line in the back and see if a small orange light is there. If you can detect any lights maybe the PSU is ok. Power right off and add Graphics Card (Ouch!) you know is working and Power up again and view your screen for any detection of function. Power off again and connect a Hard Drive. Repeat process with Rom\PCI cards etc powering right off before each instalation. Then Post back ..