problematic new build does power up & post outside of case, but screwy vid card issue

[chunkstyle]

hey guys

thank you hal9000 & cricket for the response regarding the problems with a new build. i tried what you said -- took the mobo out of the case & rigged the system up on a cardboard box with only video card, ram, monitor, keyboard & mouse attached. it did not work with the radeon 9600se card i'm planning to use. upon closer inspection, i noticed that this card, which looks like an agp card to me (based on how it compares to the diagram in their manual and how it relates to the openings in the back of the case & the slot on the mobo), doesn't seem to fit in the agp slot right. i noticed that the card didn't seem to fit quite right upon initial assembly, but it didn't seem too bad at the time. now, i can tell that it really isn't fitting right. there's this shallow key, protruding only about 1/16" or 1/8" from the bottom of the slot, located about 5/8" or 3/4" from the rearward end of the agp slot. the video card doesn't have a matching notch, and so doesn't seem to seat fully. also -- the area of the video card that mates with the agp slot only occupies the part of the slot that
is to the rear of that full-height key in the slot, toward the front of the case. length-wise, it fits fine in that section of the slot.

when i use an old pci video card in one of the pci slots, the computer does boot up, go thru the bios, and ends up with a boot failure message. i'm assuming this normal -- the expected endpoint for one of these bare bones, no-drives-or-os-troubleshooting-systems-assembled-on-a-box.

any idea what the deal is with the video card, and how i can use that card with this mobo (asus a7v333)? as far as i know, the radeon box just said that it was an agp card, not some screwy subset of agp.

also -- any advice about the "premier" power supply i mentioned in my earlier post? is it a 125w or a 250w? can't really tell from the label. assuming 250, is that enough to power a system decently?

thanks!

[RootExposure]

You probably would be able to run it on the 250 psu but i would pick up a stronger psu. Maybe a 350, A 400 watt psu would give you some room to add some stuff to the pc later on down the road.

And if you have no floppy, cdrom or hard drive you will definetly get the boot error message.

The video card seems like a strange problem. I would check that card is indeed an agp card.