So I'm booted into my new system and (apparently) all systems are go after considerable faffing around with power connectors. It wouldn't power on at all until I figured out 4-pin cpu power plug good, 6-pin bad (the receptacle is for 8). And after that mighty binge, I owe Mrs.D some quality time. Um, with beer and all. Maybe not top quality, then.

Are you testing the system before you whack it all in a case, or have you completed the build already? Just wondering 'cos you mentioned the mobo standoffs being an issue.

No, the standoffs were fine (I  had to move one). Turns out this really old mid-tower case is kitted up for mATX mbs as well as full ATX, which surprised the hell out of me. I had a problem with the power led and internal alarm speaker plugs being too big to fit the mb front panel connectors, but I figured they are non-essential. When the system wouldn't power on at all I thought the front power switch was busted, and I tried shorting the pins but that didn't work either. Then I checked the PSU with a paper clip and it powered up, tried plugging and unplugging the main 24-pin atx power connector several times, thinking it wasn't seated properly (I was really afraid I'd shorted out the mb during assembly with a dropped screw or 3). I was at a loss when I remembered reading that the 4-pin cpu power plug worked in an 8-pin receptacle. There's no documentation on the 6-pin plug at the coolmax spec page (not even mentioned, just the 4, the 24 and assorted SATA and molex connectors), maybe it's for a GPU? Probly essay Win7 tomorrow. Took a while to figure out the freaky new UEFI bios. You have to spec 'legacy' for an mbr-formatted hdd, when I did that it booted into pre-installed Fedora no prob.

Pretty sure I've got an pin connector for my GPU.

I know some do, mine doesn't.

There was supposed to be a 6 in my message but my phone ate it.

Shirley the 8 pin connector is for the CPU and the 6 pin supply is for a graphics card.  At least that's what I thought but Google suggests that some boards use the 6 pin connector for a CPU as well. My mobo (Gigabyte Z97x plus some letters and numbers) has an 8 pin connector. The CPU is an i5 Haswell chewing through 88W.

Linustechtips.com tells me that a 4 pin connection supports 155 watts and is intended for CPUs with low to mid-range greediness. An 8 pin connection supports 235 watts and is intended for hobs, room-heaters and the like. You should be absolutely fine.

 

Whelp, Win7 key 'sgood

Build pics

Linux being linux there's always one quirk.
S3 suspend doesn't work correctly. It won't wake up properly.

If it's the same problem as this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1743094

comment no.19 sez a kernel downgrade fixes the issue.
 

Oh thanks. And apparently 4.14.14 works. I'll give one a go.

Finally fixed at some point between Kernel 4.16.11 and 4.17.4!!