GA-EP45-UD3P shutdown and now won't start at all.

[grindy]

Couple of days ago I'm rendering some video and begin to smell something strange. Since one of my neighbors sometimes burns some "unusual" stuff in his fireplace, I went outside to see if it was outside or inside (wasn't out there). By the time I got back in the smell was getting pretty strong. As I was shutting my system down (normally - thru Win7) it shut itself down completely before windows could do it.

When I opened the case the smell was fairly strong there. So, while it's cooling down I took the time to clean all the fans & intakes - including the fins on my Artic Freezer 7 Pro Fluid cooler. Since it had been barely a year since I built the system I wasn't prepared to see how blocked the fins were in the Artic cooler (my bad).

So I'm guessing fried cpu, but since I had it opened up I went ahead and checked my OCZ 700 PSU with my PSU tester and it showed only the 5v light. Hmmm...

So... I have a spare 750w PSU (that I know is good) and, using it, I plug in ONLY the main 24pin and 8pin 12v connectors and it would come on for half a sec and then shut down. So I pulled the CPU cooler and CPU itself and all the RAM, but results are the same. It would come on for half a sec and then shut down.

Here's my question(s):
1- I've never tried to "power up" a system board without a cpu installed, but would it (the PSU) normally keep running and the system board just complain about the missing CPU or would it try to power up and then immediatly shut down?

2- Before I buy another system board and or CPU are there any other checks I can do to pinpoint where the problem is?

Thx in advance for all input... :)

Here's the specs:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz
2 G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit
OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS 700W PSU
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler

[Chike]

Re: GA-EP45-UD3P shutdown and now won't start at all.

I don't think it can do anything without CPU or ram.
Try to clear CMOS by removing the battery and shorting the CLR_CMOS pins for half an hour.
Always turn the PSU off or unplug it from the wall when removing/intsalling components, and discharge the capacitors by "powering up" while the power is disconnected.
Grounding yourself with a wristband or simply by touching the case once in a while is also a good idea to prevent static charge damage.