Is my brother's computer dead?

The Rocking M

About 4 months ago i built a pc for my brother and it has proved to be a nightmare from the word go. After a few initial problems I managed to get the computer to work perfectly until last friday. He said his computer was going into sleep mode after 5 mins (another matter) and he also opened the case and found the fan and heatsink had dropped onto the graphics card, he was able to reinsert the heatsink (standard intel LGA 775 heatsink) but only the exhaust fan was working.

I took his computer home to fix it and install a new heatsink (Thermaltake Golden Orb II), during which i accidently dropped the heatsink onto the motherboard where it landed on the pci slots . I finished installing the heatsink i reconnected all of the power and hardware i turned on the computer only to find myself back at where my brother was on friday. I noticed the following as well:

-HDD Light on but not blinking
-No BIOS beep code
-No POST

specs:
-Intel E4400 cpu
-MSI G33 Neo
-Nvidia 8500
-2GB ram
-250GB hdd
-Coolermaster Centurion5 case(430w PSU)

edit: forgot some information.

tsmvengy

Have you tried booting with the minimal amount of stuff (CPU+1 stick RAM) see if you can get anywhere with that.

harvest

Or boot with no ram, that should generate an error beep. If you get nothin, board or CPU is dead.

SiliconStew

I've never heard of a heatsink just "falling off".

But if it did, the processor could have been damaged by the excess heat before it went into thermal shutdown. Also, if the heatsink was dropped onto the graphics card while it was powered up, it could have shorted out the card.