I'd thought I would run this by you guys cause I know you guys rule. I'm gonna kinda break this up into sections. Sorry for the length but I hope its an easy reader.

I built a computer with a Koolance case pre-installed with the water cooling. I have a MSI Neo2 MB with a P4 3.0 GHz. I also have an ATI Radeon 9800 AIW. I have two HD and a DVD-RW and CD-RW. I also have a Sound Blaster Live. I attached the water cooling to the CPU, Chipset and VIdeo card. My PSU is a Hercules 450W.

So I moved and need edto get a wireless card for my computer. I decided on getting a linksys PCI card. It was their newest with the Speedbooster technology. After I installed it it would work but I started having some troubles with my computer locking up. FInally I left my computer for an hour and came back to find the blue screen of death. I reset the computer but it went to a blank screen and wouldn't boot. So I pulled the power cord to completely shut it off. I waited a couple of minutes and plugged the cord back in. I hit the power button and nothing happened. I tried removing all sorts of components and did the bare miniumum but still nothing. I even jumped the ATX connector to see if the power supply was bad and it still powered my water cooling. I decied to send the board back to MSI.

Now I get it back yesterday and started putting everything back together. I reset the CPU that i stored in a static sensitive bag and reset all the hestsinks for the water cooling. I plug in powercord and hit the power button and it turned on. However this time the system halts with nothing appearing on the screen. I looked in the back and the D-Bracket showed all four LEDs as red. I looked it up and it indicated that the CPU was either not installed corrected or it has been damaged. I reset it again and made sure that I applied pressure and that it was all the way in. Nothing again. I unplugged all the devices and left just the Video Card, Memory and Water cooling hooked up to the power supply. Same result. I cleared the CMOS with the jumper and still no luck. I searched around everywhere and couldn't find any solid solution.

So to wrap up this story, I'm thinking that the wireless card pushed the limit of my Power Supply and caused a short. Or the card somehow damaged my CPU which sucks because I took off the warrant sticker that was on the top of the chip. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks for any help.

Yah, it was on top of the chip. I figured it wasn't helping heat transfer but I guess now its going to hurt my wallet.

Little update incase any cares. I went to CompUSA and got a new power supply. An Antec 430W. Plugged it in and still same error. I'm gonna have to assume its the processor.

Is it possible for a chip to get damaged if a PCI card some how shorts the board?

Well, you have to take the sticker off the top of the chip. As long as the thermal paste was left on, there shouldn't have been any heat problem directly with the CPU.

As for the PSU, I don't think that 450W would have been overpowered just by adding a wireless NIC to the machine you spec'd. Unless you have like 5 HDDs and 2 CDROMs and all of them were running intensive stuff while playing Doom 3, I don't think that was your problem

My first thought would be to check for a fault in the watercooling system. I'd be too scared to put one of those in my system. Also, since you have watercooling instead of a fan: when your mobo was returned to you, it was probably set with the factory defaults in the BIOS. It's just a guess, but perhaps the mobo checks to make sure the fan on a normal CPU HSF is plugged into it. On mine, if the mobo doesn't see the CPU fan plugged in, it shuts down after 2 seconds or less. It's really paranoid about it. Since you don't have a fan (do you?), maybe there's a setting like that that needs to be disabled? I don't know, it's a shot in the dark.

So I just got my new CPU and tried installing it. No luck. I'm really pissed now. Its got to be my motherboard. I'm really starting to hate MSI.