Building new system, not working, need advice!

hi all,

I got all my parts yesterday, and spent several hours putting everything together, finally turned it on....and some things seemed to work, and some didn't:

the good:
-system powered up, cpu and case fan turned on, no burning smells or anything like that.

the bad:
-nothing is showing up on the monitor at all

key components:
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128344 )
ASUS EN8400GS SILENT/HTP/512M GeForce 8400 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121235 )
1 SATA optical drive, 2 SATA HDD (only using 1 at a time so far), 1 floppy
Corsair DDR2 800 RAM (using only 1 stick): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145184

complete list is here: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/ [...] r=12755987

some things I've done so far:
-checked monitor by plugging into different source
-tried both dvi and vga on graphics card
-tried different combinations of unplugging the various drives, i.e. running without floppy, or cd, etc.
-used jumper to reset the mobo to factory specs
-tested keyboard on different source

other things to note:
-monitor seems to recognize video connection is there, but shows message that it's going into sleep mode
-based on mouse not lighting up, usb ports don't appear to be working (mouse does light up when connected through ps/2 converter)
-keyboard, using ps/2 converter, is not responsive as far as i can tell - e.g. caps lock light doesn't turn on.
-reset button doesn't seem to have any effect, at least none that i can see without a working display.

at this point, the only thing I can think of to try, before starting to swap out parts, is move the ram into a different slot or try a different stick of ram. i would like to think the graphics card is to blame, but lack of usb responsiveness makes me think it's a more severe problem.

any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thanks rgeist.

not getting any beep. not sure what you mean by cpu connector (this is my first build). is this a power connector that should be somewhere close to the CPU?

if so, I think I might know what the problem is. The gigabyte directions were a little confusing...they mentioned 2 different power connections, and I couldn't figure out if I was supposed to plug both in, or just one of them. and i didn't want to overdo it, so I just did one of them. the one that i did plug in was a 24 pin connection.

Yep, that's the one I didn't plug in. So both that one and the 24 pin one at the top need to be plugged in. I'll try that out when I get home.

and I'll also check the directions again to see if they really were clear, and if I was just being a dumba**

thanks again.

Haha, yeah. Those additional pins are for the CPU only. No CPU power = lights and fans spinning... but nothing else. The 24 pin is for just your motherboard peripherals (sound, chipsets, PCI-E and PCI busses, USB, etc.)

yes there were, see my previous post. whether the instructions were unclear, or I was just being stupid, or both, remains to be seen.

You can try a true PS/2 keyboard and see if that works. If not, try different USB slots. (You probably know this as well, but make sure your keyboard is plugged in before you power the machine on. Some boards won't recognize a keyboard if its plugged in after the machine has started up and POST'ed)