Question Lightning struck apartment. No display on boot + VGA_LED on now among other things.

[Slimmyslimm]

Hello

My specs are:
Case: Cooler Master HAF 932
SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 120gb SSD
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
DVD: Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner 24x
CPU: Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield Quad-Core 3.06GHz LGA 1366
MoBo: ASUS Sabertooth X58 LGA 1366
Graphics Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 8GB ROG STRIX OC
PSU: CORSAIR RM 750 Gold
RAM: Corsair CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9 Vengeance 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory 1.5V
Heat Sink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus,

Last Wednesday I was on my desktop when lightning hit my apartment complex. Our chimney exploded, and lightning radiated from my radiator for like a second and shocked my arm a little bit, and also turned everything off in my room, and I am even one floor below the roof. It was a bit terrifying to say the least.

Anyway, I tried to turn my desktop back on after a minute or so, and it would boot into the BIOS start screen, but then just hang. It wasn't frozen, it just wouldn't get anywhere and pressing "del" to get into BIOS would change the message, but still be stuck. So I tried to reset the CMOS using the jumpers on my motherboard. After doing so, it was still somewhat the same result. But it turned out when I pressed "ctrl+alt+del" during this weird stuck bios boot up, it would resolve itself. And voila, I was back to using my computer just fine.

Or so I thought.

My mouse somehow got completely fried. And the audio ports (front and back) on my desktop no longer worked. Not the worst, I can manage.

But then a day or so later, I reboot the desktop, and then I am no longer getting display. The motherboard has the VGA_LED light on, along with the BOOT_DEVICE_LED. If I press "ctrl+alt+del", it does a short reboot, and the BOOT_DEVICE_LED turns off at least. I guess having the same issues as above? But the VGA_LED is still on, and I still have no display.

All the fans are spinning properly (barring the PSU fan, but I think it is in zero RPM mode?)
I unfortunately do not have a spare graphics card, nor a desktop to test this graphics card.

I have tried removing RAM one by one, trying every stick by itself, removing peripherals, etc. Still have VGA_LED light on, and no display.

I tried to do the paper clip test on my PSU (although I didn't have a paper clip, so I used a stripped twist tie), and the PSU fan never started spinning. But I can't tell if that's a feature of the Corsair RM 750. Upon googling, people said that the fin never span for them yet their computer worked just fine. So I can't tell.

My question is, what are my options? Is there a way to isolate the problem? Is it the GPU?

The GPU is the most expensive item, so I am really hoping it is the PSU, but how can I make sure of it?

The Motherboard's audio ports weren't working, so who knows what else isn't actually working.

Am I going to have to replace everything?

Thanks for your guys' time!

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, quite easily all those parts could be fried.

No way to really tell until you start replacing things.

 

[Slimmyslimm]

Yes, quite easily all those parts could be fried.

No way to really tell until you start replacing things.

Ahh, bummer. There's no chance of back-reaction is there? Like I replace the graphics card, and then the faulty MoBo wrecks THAT too?

Do you have any recommendations on which to replace first? I think PSU because it happens to be the cheapest thing first.

 

[USAFRet]

Ahh, bummer. There's no chance of back-reaction is there? Like I replace the graphics card, and then the faulty MoBo wrecks THAT too?

Do you have any recommendations on which to replace first? I think PSU because it happens to be the cheapest thing first.

Unlikely, but with fried parts, new electrical pathways could have been formed.