Sorry to read about your loss Lethn.
I know you were exited to get it build

When I think back, I'm pretty sure either during applying the thermal paste or when I was trying to fix my heatsink problem I did hear a spark so it probably was a short circuit that finally killed everything.
Just asking.. you were messing with the heatsink while the power was on the board?
If that was the case you might have shortcircuit the damn thing..
It wasn't on the board but the way I treated it clearly fucked things up, oh well, at least if I can get the old computer running things will be relatively back to normal and next time I'll be exceptionally careful.
Yep, it just sucks that with computers learning through these mistakes can often be very expensive lol.
ahh okay I was confused coz you spoke of a spark while you were messing with it...
true these are the lessons you'll never forget..just too bad we have to learn them the hard way most of the times