System Will Not Boot

I was upgrading my home-built system, swapping out the motherboard, video card, CPU, and RAM.

These are the new components:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813186144 --Motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115057 --CPU

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227324 --RAM (4 Sticks)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814187037 --Video card

I kept everything else I'd had before, which included a wireless card, three harddrives, and a sound card, with a 650W Rosewill power supply.

As far as I am aware, the RAM and CPU are compatible with the motherboard. But no matter what I do, I cannot get the system to boot. The onboard LED codes flash FF, then 03, and then the system resets. All fans spin, all LEDs are lit. The speaker is plugged in, but I get no beeps.

I have already RMA'd the motherboard, CPU, and RAM concurrently, and have been trying to get this system to work since May 12th. I just got the RMA'd CPU and RAM today and am experiencing the exact same problem, so it is not a case of faulty parts as far as I can tell.

There are no extra mounts under the motherboard. So it's not shorting out. And everything else is hooked up properly, thermal grease with the stock fan for the CPU was properly applied...everything.

I would greatly appreciate any help you here could offer.

What does the motherboard owners manual say the "03" code means? Have you gone to the motherboard manufacturer's web site and checked to see if the Q8400 is supported by the BIOS version on your board? That's a pretty new CPU and I wouldn't be surprised if the board needs an updated BIOS to work correctly. Have you gone through all the steps in the "READ before posting about boot problems!" sticky at the top of the forum?

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] t-problems

This thread seems to confirm my theory of the board needing an updated BIOS:

http://www.overclock.net/intel-mot [...] -code.html

The Q8400 didn't even exist when that motherboard was designed, so it's no surprise that it doesn't work out of the box. The guy in the post above was using an older Q9550.

Have you treid using only two sticks of Ram?

It is supposed to be liquid cooled? As in, it requires liquid cooling?

I thought that was an optional feature. I have two 120 mm fans; they should be good enough, right?

Okay, good. That's what I thought from reading on it on NewEgg.

Thank you.

I did have one more question actually.

My motherboard's eight pin CPU power plug has its holes shaped like this:

S(Square) R(Round

RSSR
SRRS

Now, my power supply has a twin four pin/four pin set that is meant to be plugged into this. One of the four pins looks like this:

SR
RS

But the other looks like this:

RR
RR

Now, I can plug both four pin connectors into the whole eight pin thing and it seems to fit properly, but I have to ask if that's what I should do or not, because I don't know very much about the specifics of this particular bit of the hardware of PSUs or motherboards, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't shape the pins differently if there wasn't a requirement for them to align properly.