You don't have to benchtest a system that had been previously working, especially an OEM machine. And I highly doubt the RAM is the problem. More than likely the CPU is overheating or the power supply is failing. "Fans going crazy" would seem to indicate a heat realted problem. Gateway/eMachines was notorious for using weak Bestec power supplies in their systems...I don't know how they are since they've been taken over by Acer.

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The fan was "going crazy", sorry if i sound stupid, but because it was too dusty and im guessing it was overheating. Which leads me to believe that either the power supply , or something else went out. So i replaced the power supply and still nothing. How can i tell if the cpu is overheating? Is it the thing under the fan with the gray compound on it?

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I'm guessing you left out part of the story about what happened? A dust clogged fan/heatsink can cause a CPU to overheat quickly & prevent a system from booting. Did you remove the heatsink to clean it? If you did, you *should* have completely removed the old thermal pad (gray compound) from both the top of the CPU & bottom of the heatsink, then applied a small amount of thermal paste to the top of the CPU. Old pads should NOT be reused & running without a pad or paste generally does not work. Radio Shack sells tubes of "Heat Sink Grease" for about $3. Here's how to apply it: http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/app...

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I removed the fan, but did not clean the heatsink. There was dust under the fan near the cpu? where the gray compound is. Should i remove the compound, clean the heatsink and cpu and apply arctic silver 5, then reassemble? also should i clean the smaller metal heatsink? next to the fan that is connected to the motherboard? is it possible that my motherboard or cpu are fried?

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I was leaving the computer on all the time, and not cleaning it. It was definitely dust clogged. I realize this is probably the reason for my situation. Feeling pretty stupid.

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It's almost impossible to burn out a CPU these days. They all have built-in thermal protection circuitry...when they reach a certain trigger temp, they simply shutdown. If you didn't clean the dust from the heatsinks, do it! But do NOT use a vacuum. Use a small soft bristled brush & compressed air to blast the dust out from between all the fins.

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