New Antec TP3 550w wants nothing to do with my MoBo, why?

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Hello, any insight is highly appreciated.
I bought a high end graphics card for my HP Media Center PC, and then a generic 450w power supply, having no money to buy a REAL PSU, but the vendor said it wouldn't fail me (don't you just love it when they do that).
Days after installing it, it died on me, of course, and for a couple of hours I feared it had taken everything else with it. After checking for burn marks and stuff like that, I reinstalled the orginal 300w PSU and, what a relief!, everything was fine, nothing had burned.
So I saved some money, did some light research and finally settled on the Antec True Power Trio 550w.
Well, cutting to the chase. It wouldn't power up my PC. It won't, actually. Nothing happens, and I do mean Nothing. No POST, no beep codes, no fans spinning... zero.
Tried 3 times and 3 times I had to go back to the 300w piece just to check on not having damaged anything and to start and continue what has been a pretty futile search for answers.
The TP3 works. I tested it on an old machine and everything was peachy.
I contacted Antec Support and they said they had no idea what it could be. Of course, if it's not broken, they have no obligation to help me fix it. The only bit of wisdom they offered was that their PSUs would sometimes not work on HP-Dell-Gateway-Emachines and others... How nice!
The product is supposed to be "universal" and "backwards compatible" and such and such... but it may not work with most computers.
HP has not replied.
And I've heard from some people that my MoBo might be protecting itself from the amount of energy... ¿?... Is that for real?
I tested the PSU on a very old MoBo, having to use it in 20 pin mode, and everything came to life. Why wouldn't it work for a newer, two hdd bearing, pci-express, "entertainment enhanced" CPU and machine?
Really, how is this possible? and is there some way around it, is what I want to know.
Some tweaking that can solve the incompatibility issue.
Something other than a new MoBo or a new PSU.
Any thoughts?
The motherboard is an ECS RC410-M.
 
Buddy, you got me stumped there. My only suggestion is to take the HP PC back to where you got it and get your money back or get it replaced.
 
It's a EVGA 8800 GTS.
But after the first install of the PSU I have not tried to put the card back in. I've been trying without it because it is a pain having to erase and reinstall the drivers for the integrated graphics of the PC. And there's no point in leaving it in because it needs 400w minimum. The original PSU is only 300w.
Last two attempts at getting the Antec PSU to run have been done with only the original components.
 
update

Hello again.
HP replied finally, and they weren't very helpful. Even after telling them that I had reinstalled the original power supply and everything was fine, they wondered if I might have forgotten to plug the 4 pin +12v of the Antec PSU on the mobo. ¿? I told them I was using the affected computer... shouldn't that be a clear sign that I knew what cables to plug?
 
another update
23/09
So there's no solution to my problem yet and I have been looking everywhere. I think I should say that modding and really advanced technicians are very scarce were I live... there are no good computer shops either, there's a lot of shops but they all use the same distributors so they all have the same crap to sell... and the highest powered psu I can find here is a Acteck (do not confuse with Antec) 500w "gamers" blue light edition that doesnt even have a dedicatd pci-ex cable... it has 1 +12v rail... so its no use.
Anyway, while surfing for answers I've found out about the dual psu mod. I have seen that some of the posters here don't see the use of it, but I think I'm in a very particular situation, and since I can't even sell the Antec TP3, I might as well try a dual psu setup, using the original Hipro 300w to power the system and the Antec 550w to power the video card.
Now, do any of you know of potential dangers in doing this, and I don't mean in the process, which I know can be dangerous if you're not careful, but... i don't know... harming the system if I use this mod... or a problem with using two very different psu's...
Any suggestions?
Thanks again.
 
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