ecs elitegroup nforce3a trouble

[yourshadow24]

i bought my motherboard with a processor in jan 06. the motherboard ran fine for 3 months until it started turning off on it own while i'd be on it.so i assume it's the power supply and test it on a motherboard i know works and it turns out that the power supply is bad, big deal. since school was out and i didn't have the money for a new power supply the computer sat. well now school's about to start and i will need the computer again i went out and bought a new power supply. turn it on and the motherborad is up to the same tricks. when reaching in to unplug something my hand bumped the northbridge chip cooling fins which were buring hot which is pretty good cause it was only on for 2 minutes. so i unplug it and let it sit till tonight when i had time to fiddle with it again. as i was plugging everthing in i was holding the area towards the northbridge, when i flipped the switch on the power supply that area got hot within 30 seconds. so what i'm asking is does anyone know what the hell's wrong?





system info

ecs elitegroup nforce3a ver 1.0a motherboard

350watt power supply

amd k8 socket 754 processor