Okay, I'll be as detailed as possible.

I got my parts from newegg and assembled my computer last night. I went to power it on, and, it powered on fine, all the LEDs went on, and the fans fired up. However, there was no picture on the screen. I hear one short beep from the PC speaker, but nothing more. Also, the floppy drive's green light remains lit. After a few seconds, the computer remains on, but it quiets down a lot.

I'm guessing this is a graphics card problem, but I'm not totally sure. The motherboard's green light goes on while it's off signifying everything seems okay. And when I power on the computer, the green light on my graphics card goes on, which signifies that it has been powered correctly.

Quick specs:

ASUS P5K-E WIFI AP mobo
EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
4 GB G.SKILL DDR2 800 RAM
850W CoolerMaster power supply
2 Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 500 GB sata drives
Sata samusung lightscribe DVD-RW
Thermaltake Armor Series 8000BWS chassis

I think it should also be noted that I had some difficulty installing the graphics card. The 9800GX2 is so big that it was nearly impossible to fit in. Even with a full tower chassis and a solid ATX motherboard, I could barely fanagle it in to the right spot. Once I got it in, the tool-free latches on my chassis could not secure it. Luckily I had right-angle SATA cables to fit underneath the huge gfx card.

Also, before I booted up for the first time, I cleand the hsf and cpu with alcohol, and reapplied a generous amount of thermal paste on each. I didn't see any leak out the sides, though, and since I've heard a beep, i don't think this is the problem.

Can anyone help me out? Thanks!

I have the Armor case, and a 3870x2 video card. I had to remove the tool-less clamps and screw the card in old-school. While doing this, it helped to have an extra hand to provide leverage on the card to align the screw holes.

I would try to re-seat the video card and make sure it's all the way in the slot. These cards are way too heavy to not be secured in your case.

The floppy drive light remaining on usually means the ribbon cable is plugged in backwards. Check your cable connection to make sure pin 1 is connected to the ribbon cable with the red or white stripe along its edge.

^Agreed.

Im most certain (80%) that the problem is the PSU. The CoolerMaster is a Tier 5 PSU. Get a good quality PSU like a PP&C 750 or Corsair 650TX. See:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] p?t=108088
for PSU tier listing.

When you have such a powerful GPU you will NEED A GOOD PSU. I dont know why people always skimp on the PSU. The PSU is like the blood of the PC.

I'm with Stoner133. Your ribbon cable is definitely backwards. I've seen this problem time and time again. That's the surefire way you KNOW your ribbon is backwards. For some computers, fixing the ribbon will fix your booting problem. Switch the ribbon cable around and see if it works. Assuming you put everything together correctly I'm betting your computer will work fine after that.

I was getting this behavior with a PCI-based GPU and a VGA CRT monitor. It was ultimately caused by the use of a non-grounding 3-prong power cord in one place (monitor or PSU, don't recall which) and a grounding 3-prong power cord in the other place. Swapping solved the problem, believe it or not.

Its the floppy ribbon cable. As others have said, it is backwards. This happened with my new build.

Even if the floppy is the problem I highly recommend the OP upgrade his PSU.

thanks, i'll try the floppy thing in a couple of hours when i get home from work. hopefully some of you geniuses will still be around to help if it doesn't work :-). and i'm surprised to see that cooler master is a tier 5 psu. i actually tried NOT to skimp on the power supply, and looked up on a different forum to find the best brands of PSUs. the thread I saw was saying that antec, rosewill, and thermaltake were of less quality and coolermaster and pc power & cooling were of better quality. so i'll def look into that

^ No the CoolerMaster should NEVER be any where close to a PP&C, Corsair, Tagan, or OCZ. I would give thir high end 500W+ PSUs a max of Tier 3. Many people go by the XS PSU List because it is mostly accurate and well known. If you have burning questions on PSUs PM Zorg