Just built a new computer, but it won't turn on

booseek

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Mar 15, 2010
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HAF 932
ASUS P7P55D-E LX
Core i5-750
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX
XFX Radeon 5870
4 GB Corsair DDR 3
Samsung Spinpoint F3
LG DVD Burner

I have experienced this problem before, but back when I built my first computer, I simply forgot to connect the power button wire to the motherboard. It is possible that I am reading the board's labels incorrectly... Is there some kind of rule about which connection is the power switch? Can someone go over a checklist about what I should be connecting?

I connected the 24-pin ATX power cable to the motherboard; the Samsung drive to the SATA slot (does it matter which one I connect first and where? Should it be labeled SATA1? What about the optical drive?); the power connectors from the PSU to the optical and hard drive; the RAM into the second and fourth slots; the fans to either the motherboard or the four-pin extension cables, my motherboard has an 8-pin EATX12V connector, but 4 of them were covered with a plastic cap and so I discarded it and connected all 8 pins to the motherboard. I did nothing with the IDE cable. I also connected the single-pin LED connectors to the system panel area on the bottom of the motherboard.

I should add that I had to add quite a bit of pressure to get the lever to go down after placing the CPU (triangles matched and it seemed to be placed correctly). The motherboard creaked in fact, but after looking it up, another person experienced the creaking as well but has a working computer.

If my grammar is off or I don't make much sense, it is 6:30 AM here after a night of building, wiring, and re-wiring, so please excuse me. :)
 

booseek

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Thanks for the reply. I actually made the same mistake five years ago. Basically, I was plugging in the connectors vertically, not horizontally. Everything works beautifully now.