My Asus board is one of those "talking cmos" boards. I run an Audigy in my system though so I just shut it off.
Here's another thing to try. Since you have it gutted, take the motherboard out of the case. Carefully examine around and under (if you can) your capacitors, especially the large ones around the processor. If any of them look like there's some sort of black, brown or white gunk under em, those capacitors have blown and it's definetly DEAD. Also, the tops of the capacitors should be flat, like a round cylinder with a flat top. If they're domed outward, like something's trying to pop through the top, the capacitor is probably bad as well, gunk or no gunk.
I had a power spike occur at work so bad, and I dont know how it did it, but it blew up the power supply and every large capacitor around the processor on the motherboard popped.
If so, it's definetly dead. If there's no evidence whatsoever of popped cap's, try another PSU.
Also, you're hooking up the auxillary power connecter besides the big fat ATX connector, right? If your PSU doesnt have one for the aux power connector, you need a different PSU. Most PSU's will have the small 4 pin one, commonly found on many boards these days, and the old P2 aux cable which looks small and flat, like 6-8 wires or something. It's odd cause it will plug into NOTHING else.
