Problems with New AS Rock MOBO

Hello,

I'm a pretty hardware savvy guy but I've never come across a problem like this. Last week I was building a new Windows system. I assembled everything, connected all of the cables but when I powered it on: nothing happened. The power supply and heat sink fan were blowing and I could hear the new SATA hard drive spinning, but nothing else was happening.

I tried a few troubleshooting things he and there but I couldn't get anywhere. The monitor I connected wasn't showing anything, not even the BIOS native to the MOBO. I troubleshot the monitor on a different machine and it worked perfectly, so I know it's not the cable or the monitor.

Also puzzling to me was the fact that when I powered the machine on, neither of the two DVD drives showed any activity. Obviously I need the drives to install Windows on the blank HDD. In further troubleshooting, I tried several different sets of IDE cables only to receive the same result. As a last resort, I removed the IDE cables to the DVD drives and powered the machine on and all of a sudden they began to whir and show signs of life. So obviously, they're receiving power, it's just that when I connect the IDE they just shut down. Totally bizarre!

So basically I'm thinking it's either a bad IDE controller on the mobo or a bad VGA controller or both. I wasn't able to try the DVI port because I didn't have a DVI cable handy. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good idea to get a second (or third) opinion on here. I love this site and you guys have never failed to deliver in the past. Please let me know of any ideas you might have.

Thanks!!