I swapped my “new” POS power supply for another today.
After speaking with the tech, he informed me of what could have caused this little disaster. He informed me that the 12v section of the power supply went bad. He then went on to tell me that when the L2 cache of the processor goes bad, it tends to short out the 12v supply. He also told me that it generally takes a week. (This is one of the few situations where I don’t know a whole lot BTW.)
He recommended to run some benchmark software for 24 hours. When I first started running it, my CPU became hot, 95° C. So I adjusted some BIOS settings and re-ran the app. Now the temp is holding steady, in the mid 50’s range.
I hope this has solved my problem, but there is no real way to diagnose it (from what I know).
If it becomes the worse case scenario, my processor (an AMD Athlon X2 3800+, Toledo Core) is still under warrantee. I also have my “old” processor sitting around as a backup.
This situation has proven to me that I need, not want, a backup computer. I cannot run my business without it. That is my next step.