So i bought a Gigabyte P35-DS3L and the E8400 from Newegg. Along with a Corsair 550VX PS and 2Gbs of Crucial Ballistix PC6400 mem, 320Gb 7200.10 seagate HD. Cooler master centurion 534 case and Artic silver cooling, 8500GT bla bla bla. Im relatively new to system builds but i feel i followed directions up to par on the installation.

I get everything installed already with high hopes. I turn it on for the first time and all the fans were running Ie. the 120mm fans the case came with and the PS and CPU cooling, video card fans were all spinning. I try to open the cd-roms but they wont open. I think i heard the sata drive spinning. The monitor wasnt recieving any signals and i didnt hear any beeps on the startup so i assume it didnt even start for the bios to run.

I did some browsing for ways to troubleshoot and was told to disconnect some things and just have the monitor,mobo,1 stick ram,video and cpu connected. everything else unconnect . so i did. With the same failing outcome. I then tried to go back through and make sure everything was correct and tightly secure all connections. I removed all the memory thinking that the mobo would beep at me but i didnt hear anything. This i assume means the mobo is DOA???? I hope if i have to return this i can get a working one. Otherwise what is another good board for some overclocking but nothing too expensive???

Have you got a speaker so that the motherboard can beep at you? Not all motherboards have them onboard and not all cases come with them.

Have you got the 4 pin CPU power connected to the mainboard?
Did you use the stock intel cooler? if no did you use thermal paste?
Try resetting the CMOS

Im also unsure if the board will post if the BIOS is a version lower that knows what a e8400 is, but someone else should be able to verify that

Well i think im making myself go crazy here but i almost dont remeber having the 4 pin connector? I dont see one on my Powersupply which means i dont think i did. I hope this is the problem. Do i have to buy on or should i have one and im just blind?

On second thought does the ATX 8-4 pin break down to the 4 pin cpu connector?

Tweaktown have a ton of info on that board and an expert from Gigabyte is also a forum member.

Yes, and it needs to be connected to power the CPU.

Yes

I hope your motherboard came with the right version of the Bios for that 45nm processor. You may need to get an old processor and flash the bios, then put in the new processor.

That is a beta bios, F8a. I doubt the motherboard came with that bios.
You will need a cheap processor to flash the bios. You can return it after flashing.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support [...] uctID=2629

Got my DS3L more than a month ago and it came with F7 BIOS which supports the E8400 without any problems, it even supports the E3110.

I think that BIOS is only required for Yorkfield, the quad-core, it's not necessary for the E8400.

Wheres shadow sniper when you need him?

No matter what BIOS you have, if you don't plug in the 4pin ATX cable it's not going to work...

Thanks guys . I figured out the 4 pin connector was my issue .. everything boots up, but with 1 beep? is that normal? i get the bios screen then it says "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" i guess means everythings fine and to insert my windows disk????

Yep, you're good to go

If you want to use native command queuing and/or hot-swapping on your HDDs then you may want to enable AHCI in the BIOS before you install Windows, assuming you're using Vista.

Im inserting my windows disk and it continues to say insert boot disk. First time build and having wayyy more issues than i expected ... i know its my first time building but im unsure i will do a build again. Frustration got the best of me.