This has not been the best build I've done, procedurally anyway.   On Tuesday, after finally getting the parts together and ready to go, I did the assembly.  I had a wonderful experience mounting everything, although a newbie moment of forgetting to install the I/O shield before the motherboard.  Oops.  The motherboard has a detachable standoff for the case leads, so you just plug them into the standoff easily, then plug the standoff into the socket and you're done!

Got everything installed, powered on and...  nothing.  No beeps, no video, but power to all components, the motherboard lights and all the fans.  Another nifty feature: the motherboard itself has an on and reset button, illuminated even, right there next to the PCIe slots.  Called tech support and they ask if I had the case speaker attached.  Case speaker?  I haven't owned a case with a speaker in a long time.  Most MBs come with a little peizo buzzer just for diagnostics these days.  But the Maximus line doesn't.  So I had to find one.  Sure enough, plugged it in, powered up, and I got the diagnostic tones for "No VGA detected".  Guess my old PCI card that I was going to use for burn-in and tweaking is not going to work.  And there are no local shops that I can get a cheap PCIe card.  So I wait for Newegg,com to deliver a $30 x1550 for testing.

This weekend it will live!  Following will be a week of burn-in, OC-ing and tweaking.  By February, I hope to have the HD3870 in hand and ready to game.  It's been an interesting and long build.