I've been WORKING on making a new machine for a friend off and on for a month now and it's driving me nuts. I've made several before, I don't know what's going on this time but I can't even GET so much as a beep out of the motherboard.

Right now I have:

Soyo SY-K8USA DRAGON Ultra board
Athlon 64 2800+ (also have a AMD Sempron 3400+ that acts the same)

Right now if I power it up, it does nothing. The LED on the MB comes on, that's it. If I take the battery out the fan spins, no beep or anything, the case speaker is plugged in correctly.. If I power it up with just the processor, shouldn't I at least hear a beep? If i reset the cmos jumper, the fan turns, put it back in place when the battery is in and it stops again. I've tried a fresh battery and it does the same thing.  Anyone have any ideas?Sounds like a MBoard short to me...pull that board and set it on a rubber mat on your desktop...hook up only RAM, CPU and the vid CARD and power up...if you get no beeps either the MBoard or the CPU has gone south.
If you do get beeps congratulations the above doesn't apply.
Introduce 1 component at atime until you find the culprit.

I've tried that and no dice. Both cpu's are brand new and I wouldn't think they'd both be bad so it must be the mb? :/Don't assume too much here...have you REPLACED the CMOS battery ? ?
Have you tried another PSU ? ?

patio.Yes I've tried both. I got a new motherboard today and will try that tonight, perhaps that's the problem after all. Thanks for your advice, by the way.