My Computer Bit The Dust

The Situation
Last night my beloved desktop experienced a fatal crash. The motherboard's north bridge began to burn, releasing a rather awful burning smell. Thankfully my graphics card, hard-drives, and quad-core processor (AMD Phenom 9850) all seem in perfect working order. Here's a rundown of my latest build:

• AMD Phenom 9850 (AM2+)
• 8 GB DDR2-800MHz
• Sapphire Toxic Radeon 4850
• Corsair 620W PSU (Modular Cabling)
• Western Digital 250GB HD (IDE)
• Seagate 160GB HD (IDE)
• Seagate 250GB HD (SATA)
• Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H (rev. 1.0, flashed with the F6 bios)
• Cosmos 1000 case (it's freakin huge)

Me Thinks It Is...
Since the smell came from the north-bridge heatsink, I think that may have been the culprit. It has to be, since the processor's temps were running between 40-55 degrees celsius, which is normal.

The Fallback Plan: Go Back To An Old Build
What I ended up doing was this, as I wanted to get a working desktop by the night's end. Thankfully I didn't ditch my AMD Athlon X2 chip and motherboard, and even had an old case around to put them into. I transferred my power supply, hard-drives, burner, and graphics card to that setup. Afterwards, I did the unthinkable: boot up the existing Vista install and have it install the drivers for everything. It worked beautifully, even though I now have a (hopefully) still functioning quad-core processor, and 8 GB of DDR2-800 sticks doing nothing now. So now I have the following:

• AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (Socket 939)
• 4 GB (2xDDR333 + 2xDDR400)
• Sapphire Toxic Radeon 4850 (running @ stock speed)
• Corsair 620W PSU
• Western Digital 250GB HD (IDE)
• Seagate 160GB HD (IDE)
• Seagate 250GB HD (SATA)
• Chieftec case (I can't remember it's model name/number)

On the plus side I'm breathing a sigh of relief that I could go back to older hardware without having to reinstall every application I have.

Hoping For A Replacement Mobo...
I did email Gigabyte hoping for a replacement motherboard to come in. Also troubling me is what to do with my Cosmos case that I believe shorted out the motherboard in the first place. I did pay a whopping $200 for it, so putting it on Ebay is my first option. I don't however want to give it to someone else who ends up in my situation. Either way, the case is going to be out of my hair.

Whats Your Take?
So now I ask you guys on what your take is on this.