well, it was 80% luck, 20% looking for a solid one piece unit. after i connected the second power cable, it seems to work great. i have not yet tried to copy and burn a disc yet though. to much stuff to do setting up a new computer. i may take the cpu cooler back off, and reapply thermal paste. it took 4 tries to get all 4 corners of the stock cooler locked into place. and of course i pulled the heat sink away from the cpu every time. i still dont know why it gave me such a hard time. i downloaded hwmonitor and kept checking the temps as i was on it. it never got above 100 degrees f., but it came pretty close after about an hour of playing minecraft (with the side of the case off still). speaking of which, the difference between a core duo @1.86ghz and an i5 quad core @3.2ghz is totally amazing. even the colors are more intense. and i am still running a vga cable to the display. i didnt have much choice with the old one. it will be interesting to see what it looks like with an hdmi cable connected to it. // the only real trouble left (I HOPE!) is trying to warranty register the mommyboard (as my little girl calls it). MSi's website will not work. i have tried several times throughout the day. not to mention that when i tried to download a manual for the m.b., i got an owners manual for a laptop! tomorrow will be loading programs and files that i saved to the external hard disk to it, to get it back to "normal". thanks so much for all of your help.
