Hey guys, so my PC parts came yesterday; naturally, I was super excited!



I did a test run with just the board, cpu & heatsink, video card, and ram installed. Worked like a charm, it whirred to life.

When I finished doing the internal build in the case and did my first power up, my worst fears were realized. The LED's flashed and the fans whirred to life... Then suddenly faltered and stopped.

As you could imagine I was about to tear my hair out in disbelief. With tears streaming down my face I cursed the PC Gods for killing my mobo. ...........but in the end I had to realize... yeah it was my noob ass that messed up.

However, I am determined to make this work. I have already sent back the old mobo for a replacement unit. I have also ordered an anti-static wrist band to lessen the chances of another mishap.

The main reason I posted up my failure, is I want to ask you guys, What should I do better next time when installing my MOBO to ensure that I don't mess up?

A couple of questions:

• I still haven't figured out what the direct cause was, but which surfaces can I absolutely NOT let my motherboard touch? I was building on top of the Gigabyte case (like they did on the newegg tutorial)
  
• Is it okay to lay the motherboard on a wooden table (the one pictured above)?
  
• Will the motherboard short if it touches ANY of the metal casing of my NZXT Phantom? When first placing it in, is it okay that the standoffs are a little off and touching some other part of the bottom of the motherboard than the holes?
  
• What is the best way to grip the motherboard when placing it into the case? Should I put the motherboard first into the case before the PSU?
  

Oh, wise WL tech gurus, please help me out! Make it so I am idiot-proofed for the second round of building (facepalm).



EDIT: In case anyone was wondering, I didn't just call my MoBo defunct after that initial try, I went through each part from RAM to the GPU to see what was the cause. I did the paper-clip trick to see if it was the PSU, it wasn't. I reset CMOS, removed the battery for 20 seconds to reset BIOS. Ran the motherboard with just the CPU & Heatsink, etc. Pretty much everything in the book.