It turns out things were not as bad as they appeared regarding the apparently "dead" motherboard I received from Newegg.com.

No, the problem was a result of operator ignorance and error...I took the motherboard for granted and applied two year old knowledge to a problem today. It turns out that I had missed a plug when I hooked the computer up. What plug did I miss? Take a look at the picture below and see if you can guess what plug I might have missed:

Now, to find out for yourself what POWER PLUG I missed, just click the picture...I'll wait.

YES! That's right, I forgot to plug in the 4-pin 12v power cable to the motherboard. In my defense, I'd never worked on a computer that was new enough to use this plug, and there was no mention of the socket in the manual. I found out the error in my ways only after going to Fry's, dropping $118 on a new motherboard and power supply, installing the new board, and then having my good friend William point out that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I might want to plug that 4-pin connector in. After getting the new motherboard to beep, I tried the same set up with the board I thought had died and *Beep Beep* it worked!

So now, I have to apologize to Newegg.com (Sorry, Newegg, for thinking that you'd taunt me with faulty hardware), kick myself in the butt (I'm standing as I write this), and then see if Fry's will be nice and allow me to return hardware I purchased out of stupidity...

And so there you have it, my new computer is up and running, and OMG the difference in performance is night and day. I took a couple screenshots of Half Life 2: Lost Coast at 1280x1024 and with 16x AF and 6x AA to show off the power of the ATI Radeon x1600XT I have chugging away under the hood:

A picture of the coastline, showing off HDR

The level of detail on the fisherman is phenomenal, especially with all the graphic settings turned way up.

That's it for the evening, good night!