Was playing some WoW the other day and my Video card fan started making a funny noise. A short time later my monitor just shut off, and by shut off I mean it just lost connection to the computer for some reason. The computer kept running and the monitor had power, just no connection between the two. I restarted the computer and it booted up fine and the monitor seemed to work good though the video card fan still was making a noise. 15 minutes later my computer shut off and wouldn't restart. I pulled everything apart and noticed a funny burnt smell. Looking at the motherboard I didn't see anything(I pulled it out of the case). I pulled everything apart and wound up bending the pins on the cpu and had to replace that. After hooking things back up though, I noticed I would get the power light on my psu after pluging it in, but after I pushed the startup button it would go out and would loose all power. I had to disconnect the psu from the mobo to get the powerlight to come back on. After removing the video card though, it would start up. There is no visable damage to the mobo or the video card, but seems like the video card is shorting out, or maybe the video card-mobo connecting is gone... any clues/suggestions?

Well it's kind of useless telling you to check out odd fan noises as soon as they start, but I guess you'll know for next time. Video cards can get extremely hot, so I'd say your problem is there. My bet is the burnt smell is just all the dust on the video card when it overheated. Circuitry tends to deteriorate quickly in heat, even if you don't see a big burnt spot or a popped capacitor. Hopefully nothing else went wrong along with it.

Do you know any good old fashioned geeks who just happen to have a spare video card laying around? (I assume yours is PCI-e) If you can get one, try switching it out. Obviously if this works, that's your problem. If you don't know anyone who hoards electronics, and you're willing to spend a little to figure this out, you could always get a dirt cheap video card on the internet (or buy an upgrade, and justify it like that - but I'd be wary of plugging an expensive card into a suspect mobo). I would expect the card to have died before it damaged the connection to the mobo.

What kind of motherboard and does it have onboard video? What kind of Video card is it?