So I took everything back and waited there while some tech tested this and that. To make a rather long story shorter, here are the highlights:

When then first connected it up, it worked fine and he was telling me there was no problem. He used a PS he had behind the counter for testing. He told me I needed a new power supply because even though the mobo claims it works with 20-pin ATX, I really needed a 24-pin.

Ok, I bought a new PS on the spot (430W Thermaltake) and told him I'd like to test it with that PS before leaving the store.

It didn't work. Same problem as my own PS. Fan on CPU won't spin up and neither will PS.

tested with his PS again and it was still working that way. His PS was a 460W older Thermaltake.

Next he tells me perhaps the components in the one I'd just bought aren't high enough quality. Goes and gets a 400W Crucial. Same story, won't work. he tried different combos of ram, etc... Finally tried a different mobo. But a completely different make/model. Doh.

In the end I took an ASUS P5-something-or-other mobo instead which has built-in video (less one PCI and one PCIe slot), and returned the graphics card. The new mobo was almost $30 cheaper than the previous one and the eVGA gfx card was about $69. That offset the $50 PS I had just bought and put a bit more money back in my pocket.

The only drawback to this setup is that until my SageTV extender comes in, I can't connect the computer to my TV. It has VGA out but the TV I'm using right now only has DVI, Component, S-Video and Composite. If the extender ends up with a long shipping time I'm going to have to borrow a PCIe card from one of my friends at AMD or something. For now I have a 20" monitor sitting on the coffee table in front of the TV.

The tip of doing a Repair Install for Windows worked beautifully. I simply had to delete a few ATI drivers and software after it was completed and then install all the drivers for the new components on the Mobo (chipset, VGA, LAN, audio).

I still have one unknown device listed but so far regardless of what I've found by Googling I can't for the life of me get it recognized. I don't even know what it is. I'll post about it later because I trust the info in here to a much greater degree.