Fried? or am I just stupid?

[Fedaykin]

Alright, i've done a little research as any good pc builder newb should but I haven't been able to find anything in any forums that sheds any little light on my situation. Here's the scenario:

Mobo: MSI 975X Platinum Intel Socket 775 ATX Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.67GHz OEM Processor (MBM-975XP-E6700)
Power Supply: Ultra X-Finity 600-Watt Power Supply
RAM: OCZ Dual Channel XTC 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz Gamer Memory (2 x 1024MB)
CPU Fan: Kingwin / Tornado / TD-9225C / Socket 775 / Intel Prescott / Copper Core / CPU Cooling Fan
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce 7950 GX2 Dual GPU / 1GB GDDR3 / SLI / PCI Express

<I believe thats all the necessary information pertaining to this situation>

I built this machine about 2 months ago with all brand new gear. I had a little trouble with some RAM that was apparently incompatible with the mobo but since then it's been working beautifully until about 3 days ago. I was in the middle of a pretty intense Company of Heros game when the display went crazy. The screen was covered in tiny boxes all of which were different shades of "static snow" and i could see distortion in the boxes wherever the mouse moved to. i shut the system down for about 30 seconds and when i tried to turn it on it started normally for a few seconds to right about the point where it signals the monitor to turn on and then it shut itself down. i waited a few minutes after that and tried again and i got lights and the cpu fan just barely starts to spin (not even enought to make a full rotation) and then it looses power. To the extent of my knowledge there are no system speakers on the mobo so im without the help of that. It was a little hotter in my room than usual at the time and before the system went down it sounded like it was working a little harder than usual, but there were no strange sounds or smells. I need help. Please.

[mjc]

Sure sounds like a video card problem...

The first thing, I'd check, is to see if the card is still firmly/properly seated, then if the fan on the card is running.

[Fedaykin]

i tried reseating the graphics card and it seems to be fine. I tried turning it on 2 more times and now im not getting lights or fan movement. I developed another thoery though.. could it be that the power supply (although its got a good 600 watts) burnt out somehow. I dont know much about power supplies other than what they do. I have a feeling that even though my power supply was 600 watts it might've been a cheap 600 watts. Im gonna look up more information on my particular PS but if you or anyone else has any other/better suggestions it'd be appreciated.

[mjc]

That is definitely an area to look at, in fact, it was going to be my next suggestion.

[Fedaykin]

i swapped out my power supply for a stronger one and got the momentary lights and fan movement, but it's the same as the original problem. so far i ruled out the ram and power supply. it still might be the graphics card but i figured that the computer would at least try to boot up instead of doing nothing if that was the problem. im losing hope.