New self-made pc won't work

[Silvermine]

First time I hooked up just the motherboard and power supply to mobo and fans. I tried turning the power on and it seemed like the motherboard turned on, motherboard light turned on, the fans turned on etc. So I shut it off, disconnected all the power and all and then put in the vid cards and sound card. I turned the power on again and the vid card fans were running, everything seemed like it was working ok but then after a few seconds some smoke started rising from the small space in between the sound card and the bottom of the case. I took a quick look before I turned the power off but I couldn't tell if it was coming from the motherboard or the sound card. I took everything apart and looked at the mobo and sound card but I couldn't notice and damage that I could see. I tested just the mobo and the light turns on so I think it' still working properly but i'm not sure. So after that I put everything back together again. This time I noticed in the mobo manual that you need to put a small wire onto both vid cards linking them together so I did that too. I started by plugging in my monitor [which I know works cause I have another crap computer that it's normally hooked up to] using the little converter plug into the bottom of the 2 cards. Turned on the power and this time it seemed again like everything was on. Hard drive was spinning, vid card fans were spinning, mobo light was on. Two things I noticed was that no signal/feed/picture was going to the monitor and the hard drive light on the front of the pc wasn't turning on. Not sure if I hooked up the hard drive light plug correctly honestly but I heard it spinning on start up so it seems to be working. I tried moving the montior plug to the other of 2 slots on that 2nd card and still with no picture moved it to the top card but again nothing.

At the moment I have absolutely no clue what to do. I have no idea if what that smoke was coming from is what is preventing something from connecting via the motherboard and I need to get the motherboard replaced or if maybe i'm not hooking up something right for the vid cards. I tried just booting the motherboard up, like to look at the BIOS with the hard drive unhooked but everything else still plugged in and again no picture but I did not get any message from the monitor saying there's no feed/no signal so i'm really stumped.

here's the parts I have:

motherboard - ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe NF4SLI 775
cpu - INTEL|PD 930 3.0G 775 2x2M R [dual core]
vid cards - MSI N NX7600GT-VT2D256EHD [x2]
pow supply - RAIDMAX| RX-580F 580W
memory - 1G|KST DII667 KVR667D2N5/1G R [x3]
sound card - SOUND BLASTER|AUDIGY 2 ZS PCI OEM

any suggestions would be great! my pc is like, my life, and I need to get this thing working!!!

 

[Rik]

Get the mobo and the sound card replaced, then read the manual on setting up sli. If sli cards arent set up properly then they wont work!!!!

 

[Silvermine]

honestly there's nothing special in the instruction manuals that have to do with installing the hardware any different way than I did, it just has things you need to set in the BIOS but when I started it up I got nothing on the screen so I don't know if I can even get into the BIOS or not

 

[Tmagic650]

Silvermine,
smoke in any quanity is a very, very bad thing... Your motherboard is probably bad. The causes could be a partially installed card or a short from motherboard to case

 

[Silvermine]

right well i tried just booting up the mobo alone with no memory in it and nothing would happen so I think the board is fried. i sent it in for a replacement but i'm going to have a shop put together my stuff, I obviously mishandled it when trying to put it in the case and I don't feel like frying it again.

 

[Tedster]

read the "no post" guide in the guides section.

 

[Superinc]

sounds like you left an screw/metal object between the motherboard and the case.. did you put spacers when you installed the motherboard.

 

[Tmagic650]

Non-conductive spacers aren't necessary in most cases now. The ATX and Mini-ATX boards can have 6 or 8 mounting holes. All these holes can have metal standoffs. Problems occur when metal posts are placed in areas that have no holes. The metal standoffs short the motherboard circuits, possibly burning out the motherboard...