Well, I have now finished sleeving all the SATA cables. Those sure go quick compared to the PCIe cable! They look much more professional, too. Not anywhere near as tough to sleeve. I've also sleeved the 8-pin motherboard power cable, but it's obvious I still need more practice. I'm getting better, but not there yet.

I started on sleeving the 24-pin motherboard cable and discovered that one of the wires was severed neatly into two pieces underneath the heat shrink. I don't think that I did it, but it is a possibility, since I had just cut off the heat shrink at the time I found the severed wire. I'm hoping that I didn't do it and that this is the cause of my motherboard issues. I'm asking Silverstone to send me either a replacement wire or a replacement 24-pin cable. It should be in warranty, but obviously I don't want to RMA the power supply when it's perfectly good other than needing a cable.

I'm really hoping that this severed wire was the cause of all my motherboard issues and that fixing it will cause the system to work. That would confirm that the wire was cut before I removed the heat shrink. And fixing it would get the computer past that part of POST and on to the next bug! However I think I will still need to update the BIOS, even after I do fix the cable.

I suppose I could end splice it together, cover it with electrical tape, heat shrink over the electrical tape, and then sleeve the cable to repair it. But it's probably safer just to get a wire that hasn't been severed in the first place. Last thing I want to do is to come home and find out that my computer burned down the house. That'd be a waste of a good computer.

It seems like everywhere that I want to ask for technical support is closed on the weekends. Gigabyte, Silverstone, Newegg, etc. I guess I'll have to take some vacation for more computer building time when the stores are open.

Maybe I can find a computer repair shop in town that is willing to loan me a core i7 920 to flash the motherboard BIOS. The repair guys I know only do laptops, so not sure what to do about that.