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We just finished putting together an ASUS SK8N with an Opteron 240, and the damn thing won't post. We put in a geforce2 mx200 video card (1.5V AGP), and even with the IDE slots unconnected we can't get anything to happen. It's being powered by an Antec TruPower 480W power supply, so it's not that. The problem has to be with either the video, motherboard, or CPU.

Here's what happens:
1) When power is applied, the fans all spin up, the hard drive clicks a bit, but the monitor never comes out of power-save.

2) if we hit the reset button when the cd drive is open, it closes. Does this mean the nforce3 is seeing the reset and sending a reset down the IDE chain?

3) We've tried clearing the battery backed BIOS options, and that hasn't helped.

Any suggestions? I'm thinking #2 means that the motherboard is ok, but who knows. It could be a bum mobo. We'll try putting in a different video card tomorrow, but I'm going to be royally pissed off if it's the SK8N or Opteron.

Did you buy me one too?

I'm afraid that Opteron is faulty.

Han- Do you think the reset response from the cd-rom means the motherboard is good?

Ian - This was for work. It's not too often that I plunk $1500 down for a new server box with 2GB of RAM. Luckily we bought the Retail version (from newegg.com) so getting a new Opteron shouldn't be too hard.

Before you send CPU back try a different video card and a prooven memory stick. If that wouldn't do anything then I'm pretty sure the CPU is bad.

Motherboard should be ok, unless there's some visible damage. Try to power up the system with only Opteron and its cooler+fan, video card and memory present. Disconnect everything else!

Yeah, we unhooked everything but video card and opteron. No dice. Tried a proven PCI (not AGP this time) video card... nothing. RAM was taken out of a working desktop. It's either the Opteron or SK8N. We're thinking about just ordering another of each and seeing if that fixes it.