My Computer Problems

So I was all set to go to the LAN Party last weekend but then tragedy struck. Actually bad luck struck. I had an AMD 3500+ processor laying around doing nothing so I decided to go out and buy a motherboard for it and hook it up and use that at the LAN. I get the motherboard home and realize it doesn't fit right into my old case so I have to go back to the store and buy a case. So I get it home and put the motherboard in the new case and hook up the power supply to the motherboard and to the case fans and LEDs to make it all fancy like. Of course I went ahead and moved my hard drives, DVD drive, RAM and video card to the new motherboard. Then I went to power it on.........nothing. No fans whirling, no lights gleaming. I check all my connections again. Nothing. Immediately, I thought it must be the power supply so I tried another power supply that I knew to be good....Nothing. So I take everything out of the case and set it up on my workstation and try powering it on again. Again nothing. I'm like what the hell. Figured it must be a bad motherboard. So I hook everything back up in my old case using my old motherboard and I get on the internet and do some research about the problem. I read somewhere where someone used a paperclip to connect the power pins on the motherboard. I tried that. Guess what...the damn thing powered on...but only for a second. The fans began to spin and the lights flickered for just a sec. So I put the power switch pin connector back on and hit the power button again...it powered on! Sweet. So I unplug it from my wall at my workstation and I carry it over to my computer setup area and plug it all back in and hook up the mouse, keyboard, monitor and network cable. All good to go!! Just one problem. I hit the power button and it doesn't come on!!! WTF over?!
So I forget to unplug the power, I open the case and check my connections. I push down on the main power connector and it powers on again! WTF? Then I read somewhere about motherboards not powering on if they are screwed to the case too tightly. So I loosened all the screws a bit and since then I haven't had any problems with power.
Now that my power is up, let's go!!! I boot up...blue screen of death at windows startup. Again and again...So I do a windows install on another partition and bring up the system and begin troubleshooting my other windows xp installation. I go on to read about how to move a hard drive / OS from an intel based system to an AMD based system. Unknown to me, there preparations that must be made in order for it to work. Koo koo.. So I take all the hardware and move it all over to the old system to make the recommended preparations. But, windows won't boot up on that system now either! AAAAahhhh!!!
So I spent another few hours reinstalling all my games that I want to play at the LAN and downloading windows updates. Windows works fine, all updated and all my drivers work fine. I test play a few games just to make sure. Everything is all good. Off to the LAN I go!!
I get to the LAN at about 6:30pm with a Quake 4 tourney scheduled for 8:00pm. I play my first quake 4 tourney match and I win. Yay me. Then I go to play some Call of Duty 2 just for wasting time and the graphics start to glitch. I quit the game and check my temperature settings. The card is running at 96c!! It usually runs at around 75c at full load so I don't know WTF is going on. So I turn off the system for about 30 minutes while I go get something to eat. I come back and power on the system. I play FEAR combat for about 5 minutes and the graphics glitch again. Again I check the temp. It's at 104c this time!! Holy crap!! So I open the case and guess what...the fan on the 6800gs isn't working! The card is only 1 week old and the fan went out. I take the card out and check the connections with the heatsink and notice that parts look to be melted. So I had to RMA the card. Expecting a new one soon.
Soooo anyway all that BS I went through to get ready for the LAN was all completely useless because of my bad video card. I wanted to cry.