If I plug a power supply to only the motherboard will that tell me if the motherboard is dead or not?

Asked by Fallstand (1130

) November 5th, 2007

I have an old computer that got burnt out in a lightning storm..and for the past year I thought the whole thing was dead..But I got bored tonight and found that the video card and the DVD writer worked in another computer of mine..

I know for sure that the lightning killed my HDD and my power supply.. If I take an old power supply and plug it in the the motherboard will that tell me if its dead or not? Also the computer that shorted was a small form factor PC and uses a 125v power supply and I only have a larger power supply to test…

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Even if your mother board is fried, a few LED lights could still flash. The only real way of determining if it is still functional is to stick a video card into the mother board, and hook it up to a computer screen. If nothing happens on your screen when you boot it up, then it’s most likely dead. There’s no way of just looking at it and determining yes, or no.

dtone (36

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