System down - can't solve why

[L0s7 4 Lyf3]

A bit ashamed to have to post a thread for help.

Anyway, last month my VGA fan started whining as the bearing was going bad. Ok, no biggie, picked up a Zalman cooler and installed it on my card, suddenly the system would no longer POST anymore. I don't really want to spend my time fixing computers anymore, so I just assumed I had inadvertantly killed the card with a static discharge (even though I would regularly touch the psu to ground myself) and ordered a new card. When I got the new card it still wouldn't post, figured it would be the mobo after that.

Ordered a refurbished mobo, got it and it worked fine. I OC'd it a little bit a week after I got the board and it was running fine, ran oc'd a-ok it seemed all night. Took a shower the next day and came back to my system sitting there locked up. Toggled the power and the system would no longer post. So I reset the bios through jumpers a few times (and even via battery), switched up the order and combinations of RAM in the DIMMs and it would no longer post. However it did begin to post once, but for whatever reason I kept testing and tried to put my ram setup back to normal and it's back to not positng.

Have since tried:
Old mobo
Using ram from a separate running system
Old vga
Different PSU
Different CPU

System was:
A64 3000 Venice
2GB DDR400
X800XL AGP
MSI K8 Neo2-F V2

Now:
A64 X2 3800 Manchester
2GB DDR400
HD3850 AGP
Asrock 939 Dual Sata 2

 

[Direfox]

This is a toughie and sounds like you know what your doing. Only thing I can add is carefully check your case wiring like the wiring from your power switch to your mobo and see if there are any abrasions that could cause a short.

There may be two problems which makes it very hard to diagnose, good luck.

 

[L0s7 4 Lyf3]

Right now I have both systems side by side for bench testing and I can swap hardware between the two on the fly. No go. I stuck ram in an older system, posted first try and has been running flawlessly. I don't have a working 939 setup or agp setup to check the other hardware on though.

 

[engiNURD]

do you get error beeps without any RAM nor vidcard?
if no more than 1 stick of ram works, then it could be a mobo or psu issue.
what psu's are you using to test these systems?

 

[L0s7 4 Lyf3]

I got no beeps as a full system or bare bones.

I'm using my Tagan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817101516

and a fairly generic 430W Cooler Master that I'm borrowing from a friend for bench testing the bones.