my desktop had a problem of not turning on, only activity seemed to be power supply
always went off right away, although i didnt get the slot machine look :)

turned out to just be the BIOS, and as said above, might have a jumper to "reset" BIOS
and frankly, i wouldnt say dell knows whats fried, as it could easily be cpu as well
as another case my cpu was fried and got the same end result