Weird/Dead Mobo in W2646

So a friend dropped off his eMachines W2646 (</3) this morning. It's actually in surprisingly good condition, but the power supply he "believes" went with it was out. Since it's a Bestec and has the 20+4Pin connections, I'm assuming he's on the ball.

Long story short: It won't turn on.

I tested the PSU independently (old paperclip method ) and it's very thoroughly dead.

Now, I don't have an abundance of old supplies lying around, but I dug up what I could.

With the 250W Bestec out of my own eMachines (can't wait to replace this, god) , I found something most interesting out.

The supply works, and gives power to the board. By this I mean, when the PSU is plugged in it immediately lights up the Power LED in front. Pressing the switch and holding it in both do nothing. No fans jump, and the PSU fan doesn't even kick in. Note though, it's ONLY the power LED. The others remain off. I reseated the P/W Switch, tried tripping the circuit with a paperclip, nothing happens.

Everything appears to be seated properly and I see no obvious physical damage to the board. I'm sure it's fried, but I was wondering if there was anything else I should try.

__Lolek

try resetting the cmos with a jumper

EmAn said:

try resetting the cmos with a jumper

Click to expand...

No go. :/

Sounds like the power button wiring that connects to the motherboard.

RJARRRPCGP said:

Sounds like the power button wiring that connects to the motherboard.

Click to expand...

I don't know about that; even manually completing the circuit doesn't power it up. The only reason I could imagine for that would be if the failure is on the board itself (how on earth could a simple circuit fail like that? Meh.)

I popped open the Bestec powersupply that used to be in it and--lo and behold, blown capacitor. Chances are it took the motherboard with it.

Alright, so. Minor update.

I pretty well gutted the W2646 on account of its deadness. I noticed something odd, looking over every centimeter of the board and finding no obvious faults--front or back.

There's a series of seven or so caps parallel to the CPU, three of which are bubbled on top. they aren't burst, there's no leakage, but the top isn't flat like normal--it's bellowed out a little.

A) Does this imply bad caps?
B) If they were to be replaced, might it resolve the problem, or is the board probably already fried?

Remember. There's nothing when power is connected but the pwrLED lighting up on its own. Jumping the power circuit does nothing.