In 2008 I built this rig though over time I made some upgrades, namely the ssd. This is how it is today: Antec Solo Case Antec 550W PSU GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-DS4 AMD Athlon 64 X2 3.0ghz Socket AM2 125W Dual Core Sapphire Radeon 4850 Intel 80GB SSD ASUS BluRay SATA Combo Drive OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Linux Mint this ran well as my main htpc for many years until the end of last year. I had just put together the rig I'm using now but one night I was just playing some basic avi video files and win7 just froze. strange thing is the video only froze, the rest of the system was there but as soon as I clicked the "see more details dialog" bam...computer just shut off. freaked me out. after playing around with it and using my duster on it I got it to boot up but within a few minutes the same thing happened and then it wouldn't post or do anything, ever. so I shelved everything for 4 months. this april I broke everything out and decided to get it functional, borrowing a PSU from someone thinking that was where my issues lied. to my surprise the system magically booted up! i didn't change anything... so i backup all my data and decide to slap linux mint on there for S&Gs, all loads fine. everything seems to be working, though I noticed the GPU was getting ridiculously hot to the touch within seconds of booting up (this was occurring within both win7 and linux mint). handled 1080p playback fine though, no stuttering, corruption, artifacts, etc. had to use basic GPU drivers as the ATI ones messed up all the text really bad. so after all of this, other things in life took the spotlight and I put the system in hibernation and left it for a couple weeks, then i unplugged everything when a friend came to stay and needed the space for a bed and whatnot. now two weeks later i get it all out and when I attempt to power it on nothing happens on the monitor via dvi or hdmi. I open the system up and notice that the GPU is flashing two red leds (D1601 & D1602) every 10 seconds and I never get any beeps or HDD activity. switched the GPU to alternate PCI-E slot same result. remove the GPU altogether and never POSTs...no HDD activity. all fans are spinning fine, GPU and CPU and PSU, but the GPU no longer overheats or even gets slightly warm, though once again the fan does spin. pulled CMOS battery, problem persists. is my mobo finally dead? is my PSU just being a jerk? short somewhere? if i had a very similar situation a few months ago, no post, seemingly dead system, what are the odds it might come back to life like it did before? what can I do while spending the least money/time to determine what is the culprit? how can I wipe the SSD if it could be the OS/driver related? sorry for ADHD-ness of this post, I'm up way too early trying to get this rig running for a friend in need. thanks for reading and any assistance! truly appreciated. :]