I understand how you're feeling, the first build is scary as hell. I was scared shitless as well. :)
My first self-built system only cost $400-ish, but losing a part meant I was going to have no computer for a while, because I was soooooo strapped for cash (I only had $1-2 to spend on each meal.. lol).

Like DarrkPhoenix said, though, the chance of anything actually getting fried or whatnot is really low. If you really want to minimize your risk, though, I do have a suggestion although this may backtrack you somewhat: Use a barebones build for your first boot.

Pull out all but 1 stick of memory.
Pull out the power cables from all your drives (both hard drives and your 3 optical drives).

Then do your first boot. This should get you just past the memory check before giving you an error, at which point you know you've succeeded with all the other wirings enough that things are not going to pop.

Now you can proceed by turning off your system (and your surge protector too if you like), reinserting your memory, reconnecting power to your drives, turning on your system, and finally starting to set up your first self-built PC.

And..................

FAIL.

It looks like it comes on, all fans are on, and blowing.

The second time I tried, I put my WIndows disk in the first drive, and turned it on, and it sure looked like it was booting from there, or something, cause that drive's busy light was on for quite some time.

But I've got NOTHING on screen. Tried plugging into both video cards, tried pluging into thhe motherboard, and tried with both DVI plugs and HDMI plugs, with two cables I know are both good because I use them all the time.

And nothing.

Can it be possible BOTH video cards are bad??? And even if that longshot were possible, then both video cards AND the onboard video are bad???

I don't think so. I think I've got a major, major, major FAIL here.

After the disc stopped working, it is now sitting there and both the power LED and hard drive busy LED are blinking, on and off, together. I'm thinking that's NOT good. I doubt if the power indicator should be blinking. I imagine that stays on when on and turns off when off.

Goddammit, I just don't think I've got it in me to troubleshoot this thing. It could be ANYTING at this point, and with NOTHING coming up on the screen, it's hard to even tell.

I should never have tried this.

Okay, upon further observation, it's very apparent that the power LED and hard drive busy LED are just copying each other.

And since it's brand new, unformatted hard drive, I would guess the hard drive busy light maybe is supposed to blink when it's waiting for format instructions??? At least I suppose that's possible. Now I just checked the front panel wiring, and I plugged the power LED right where the manual told me to, and I plugged the hard drive busy LED right where the manual told me.

Although in the scheme of things though this is a minor thing. The fact nothing is coming up on screen is the most important thing.

I'm going to remove both video cards and plug back into the on-board graphics output and try that for now.


And it came up! Windows is loading. BUT the graphics are a mess. Green squigly lines throughout the thing. It's all messed up but the WIndows screen just came up so I'm gonna try to see if I can at least install Windows.

Once you get Windows installed, you should be over the worst of it. You should then install your video cards and when you fire it back up, go into the BIOS and make sure you change it from the integrated (on-board) graphics. Hopefully, once you do that and you get your drivers installed, you'll be good to go.

I was hoping that too, but, no go.

I installed WIndows, and then put the motherboard disc in to install all of the drivers (inluding Intel Graphics drivers) and when it restarted, the BIOS screen came up, it started to go into Windows, and.... gone.

Now I get no signal from the onboard graphics, and tried both video cards again and get nothing. And because I can't even see BIOS, I can't change anything.

But I know WIndows is loading because after it comes up I hear the Windows intro on my speakers.

It seems to working okay except for no video ANYWHERE.

I'll bet I've got a bad motherboard. Of all the friggin ones to be bad, I bet it's my motherboard. I say that because even when I DID get the onboard output to show up, it was really, really, really screwed up. It had green and purple lines horizontally all over the screen, and it was just a mess. I could make out what was on the screen, but it was obvious something was wrong.

And now.... nothing.

And now I'm out of ideas. Because now I can't even see anything at all. I've tried all I know to try, but it's hard to do anything when you can't see anything on the screen.
And now it won't do anything.

No longer comes up in Windows, or anything.

I hit a button that says "reset" and ever since then, it no longer comes up into WIndows (I know this because I don't hear the Windows welcome AND when I hit the power off I don't hear the Windows signing off sound and it just immediately powers off.)

Nothing. Fucking nothing.

OldeFatGuy I know whats happened it happened keep pressing buttons on your monitor you have switched it from dvi to hdmi havent you! or you haven't connected the vid card propperly.
Is the vid card flush in the socket or is it slightly misaligned did you connect the extra power cables that the video cards nowadays use! they look like
---------
l 0 0 0 l
l 0 0 0 l
---------
sort of.

you'll find pins on the end of your vid card looking like

. . .
. . .

guess how they fit together 8)

also is the power unit the big square (usually black thing) with shitloads of cables coming out of it if it is anything under 500 /550 watts your in trouble. Either that or your monitor died!

Have you connected the 8-pin ATX Power Supply Connector?
The circle in red in the image.

Have you tried removing both 560's and trying the on board output alone ?

If it works, install again one single 560, ensuring that all connectors are well in place , including both power inputs

look in borrowing a monitor and see what that does for you.

Well, here's the latest news.

It kept doing nothing, but this time I got something on the screen. And it was a message saying "CMOS Settings Wrong" and that's where it hung up.

So, I read the manual, and it told me to go into BIOS, and load defaults. I did that, saved and exited, and it started to boot.

Now before I go on, I noticed this last night too, and again today, at first this message comes saying something like "no devices found" or "not finding any devices" but then it would come up into Windows OK.

So, it did this time too, and like last night, as soon as it got to windows, my screen went blank, monitor lost signal.

So, on a hunch, since I saw the words "Intel VGA grpahics drivers being installed" last night, this time I unplugged the HDMI cable and plugged in a plain old VGA cable, and NOW I'm BACK IN BUSINESS!!

Windows comes up, it even comes up BEAUTIFULLY now. No horizontal lines, nice 1920X1080 layout, it LOOKS GREAT.

BUT, I still have no video cards.

So, that's my next attempt.

Oh, any one know why on the bottom of my screen I'm getting a "This copy of Windows is not genuine"???? WTF?? I paid for that, I loaded it, and I put in the CD key when it asked. WTF is up with that???

Ok, take a deep breath and repeat after me "I will not be denied!" (Quest for Glory 2 reference ftw). Now, you have a computer in front of you, that refuses to show you the video signal. This can be caused from 3 possible things. Video Card, Cable, Monitor.
The easiest one to check is of course the Cable. Use it to connect another device to another monitor/tv and see if it works. I think you've already checked it, so we can assume the cable is working fine.
Next one to test should be the monitor. Depending on what is easier, either connect the computer to another monitor (or television), or connect another device to your monitor. Two different devices not working on the monitor means the monitor is at fault, two different monitors not working with the same device means the device is at fault.
Assuming both the cable and the monitor work, that means that the faulty component is the graphics card. I do find it impropable that both the onboard and the PCI card be faulty, so the next question would be if your motherboard has a way to disable the on-board graphic card, or if that can only be done through the OS or BIOS.
So, you'll have to see if your computer passes POST, and if it does whether you can see what happens. I'd suggest removing the keyboard and mouse, since most computers should complain and stop if they don't find a keyboard (The so ironic message "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue"). This means that it should stop after the BIOS screen, before going on to load the OS. An alternative way to do this would be to remove the Hard Drives, since it should then show the equivalent of "Operating System not Found", though this comes after the POST.
As for the LED codes, I'd suggest you contact the manufacturer of the motherboard and ask where you can find a list of the LED codes. Better yet, call them and yell at them for not providing them.
P.S. It is also possible that your monitor cannot handle the resolution the video card is sending, thus giving a "Signal out of Range" message. A CRT monitor shouldn't have difficulties no matter what resolution is send to it, but good luck finding one of those to test.

Main thing though, keep calm. This is just a machine, and you won't admit defeat to it. Hope you get it working soon.

Edit: And of course, while I type this, you've already gone and found out the problem...
As for the "not-genuine" part, it means you still haven't activated Windows. First get the system up and running as you want it to, then go to activate.

actually it can happen even after you activated it, happened to me several times.
just have to reboot and hopefully it disappears.

Yeah, I activated it, and now it's gone.

BUT, I still have no video cards.

And when I installed the motherboard drivers, it appears as though ONE or at least ONE driver is failing to be installed as I keep getting a box popping up telling me that. And I fear it is the SATA III driver.

Why? Because when I first turn it on, watching the screen during it's run through BIOS, I always see a line for my hard drive that ends with "SATA I".

Is that normal maybe?? Or should it probably end with "SATA III"??

Or is this something so trivial no one else has every noticed?

Ok, continue the "I shall not be denied" mantra, seems to be working ;).
On to the next obstacle then.
Best way to check what drivers are missing is to use the "Device Manager". Right click on "Computer" and select "Manage". On the screen that opens, go to "Device Manager" and see if you have any "Unknown" hardware, or anything with a yellow question mark. If you do, right click on it, select properties, then choose the tab "Details". It should have a dropdown list and a box below it. From the dropdown select "Hardware Ids", which is the identification of your hardware, so you can search for it.
If on the other hand there isn't anything wrong in the Device Manager, you can always go to the BIOS and see what devices it recognizes (SSD, Normal HDD, and the 3 optical). It is possible for the BIOS to not recognize something while the OS does, or vice versa, but you shouldn't encounter any such thing with your configuration.
Waiting for an update, and as soon as you are satisfied with this part, we can move on to the graphic cards.