This is now solved and by the dope that created the problem.🤣
It was strange to me that the CPU was loose when sitting in the socket. It came out attached to the old fan, so I removed it, cleaned it, set it back in the socket, and went about installing the new cooler. From there, there was no action as described in previous posts.
So I'm sure you can tell what I neglected to do in my haste, but I hadn't figured it out, although, I figured it was something simple, given the performance of the machine before my attempted improvement.
So I proceeded to remove all the the RAM, the sound card, wifi card, disconnect and reconnect MB and CPU power and so on. Still nothing. No fans, no post, only the MB rgb's lit. My only choice was to remove the cooler again. So I did and again, the cpu was stuck to the cooler. I had never had a cpu come out still attached to a cooler and yet this was the third time. Light bulb....
I never released the tension bar of the CPU seat on the MB before replacing the cpu. I just laid it in the socket. So I lifted the tension bar, seated the CPU, torqued the tension bar back down and Voila! the CPU was seated correctly, the cooler was installed, all the peripherals replaced, and I'm back up and running.
My 3 day excursion to the Land of Dumb has concluded. 😉
-15C drop in temp using the new TR Phantom Spirit 120 SE over the AMD stock cooler that came with the chip that I've been running for the 3 years since building this PC. Quite happy with that. 92C to 77C using CPU-Z stress test.