Yesterday, after waiting with baited breath, I finaly got my new motherboard (ASUS P5N32 SLI SE) and processor(Core 2 Duo E6400) and so naturally I started putting together my system. Everything went fairly well, I was pretty delicate with the hardware, I was grounded the whole time, etc., etc.
After some trial and error I had enough hardware hooked up to try a first boot. I turned on the power supply, turned on the front power switch and was very encouraged to see all of my fans running (front fan, both ps fans, gfx card fan, and after a little troubleshooting, my mini liquid cooling system fan). At this point I knew that my power supply worked fine, and I had an inckling that my motherboard was ok too because all the 3 pin fan connectors were relaying power and the power led on the motherboard was steady green.
Herein is the problem: no matter what I did, I could not get and response on the monitor nor any BEEPS FROM THE PC SPEAKER! I tried clearing the CMOS like forty times: no response. I checked to see if the speaker was plugged in to its four pin bay - no response. I tried swtiching out my cooling system for the factory heatsink: no response. I tried removing my memory and video car: no response. At this point I was baffled and pretty angry so I called ASUS tech support, I was on the phone with the guy for about 2 seconds before he told me to try getting a new motherboard, CPU, and power supply.
I'm going to call Newegg and try to get them to replae my parts around 12:00 or 1:00 Eastern Time, but before then I figured I'd ask here.
There are a couple things I think might be screwing me:
1. Newegg advertized that the mobo supports up to DDR2 800, however the manual only mentions a maximum of DDR2 667 - still I would think I would get a memory beep code if this was the problem.
2. This is the one that most concerns me: The first few times I powered on my system, I let it run for about 30 or 40 seconds without realizing that my colling fan was not turning so there's a chance I fried the CPU - but I don't think so because I would assume that the motherboard has a thermal failsafe.
Please Please Please, If you have any advice, let me hear it, I so don't want to send back for a new mobo and CPU...