And things start to look up

So, it's looking like we had a bad Asus Striker II Extreme motherboard sent to us from NewEgg, which has set us back about 24 hours in this build. After trying about every other option (different PSU, different CPU, different RAM, different GPU, removing the phase change cooling system, running the whole thing with only the CPU on an antistatic surface to ensure there were no shorts, etc.), we decided it just had to be the motherboard, went to a local computer store this morning (thanks MicroCenter!) and got an E-VGA NVIDIA nForce 970i Ultra SLI motherboard. So far things are looking like they're functioning -- tests are now passing that were previously resulting in completely and total failure. We haven't gotten everything installed yet, but just to give an idea of where we're at, and the mess we've been dealing with, I'm posting some pictures.

Try these on for size:




And we're just now attaching the phase change cooling system...