Maybe I should have just bought a new PC?

I had an Extreme GAS Blowout Explosion yesterday in response to a friend sending me a link to a Supermicro motherboard which had 2x full fat sized PCI slots.  I'd been planning on buying an external PCIe<->PCI enclosure to continue using my PCI based sound cards but as they cost as much as this new motherboard and I'd need a new motherboard to upgrade my system anyway, this seemed like a good idea.
 
I'm keeping the case, PSU, HDDs, SSD, optical drive, audio cards, peripherals and such and have ordered the following:
 
Supermicro X11SAE-F Mobo
6th Gen i7 6700, 3.4 GHz (I considered the 4GHz variant, but both the price and power consumption hikes put me off)
64GB 2133 UDIMM ECC Crucial RAM (4x 16GB sticks)
MSI Nvidia GTX 970 gfx card
 
Not exactly a 'bargain' as the above came to a bit over a grand (which is why I was wondering about whether buying a new PC was the better option), but I don't think there's anyway I'd get a pre-built with PCI slots and I also don't need to buy the external enclosure.
 
A looooooong weekend of reinstalling awaits...  I've got a retail Windows 7 64-bit Professional licence, so that's what I'll install on the 'new' machine.
 
 

the AsRock H97M Pro 4 has two standard PCI sockets, although the processor socket is 1150, not 1151.
I got it for about 40 dollars in a bundle deal with an i5 4690K ($200 for the i5, $40 for the mb).
 

If you run EastWest libraries 64GB will help.
 
Most consumer priced board still have PCI slots. Gamer boards have more PCIe slots.

A Xeon processor?
 
If I went that way, I'd get a dual CPU motherboard so I could have 12 or 18 cores, or whatever.
 
I know practically nothing about Xeon stuff, is it really more suitable for audio?
 
Xeon processors are not usually unlocked in regards to the clock, are they?
 
I'm not saying you've done anything odd, I'd just ignorant and would like to be enlightened as to why you went that way.
 
I guess I'm just thinking the cost is much higher for these kinds of parts, so you may as well go for broke and get the best. 

Not using a Xeon processor as the board is 6th gen i-series compatible (so 6th gen i7 is what's going in it).
 
Lots of 'fun' with this Saturday morning, no post, no gfx output :-(  Ran it in a bare minimum config and the problem remains.  Ran it without any memory and I did get the correct BIOS error code beeps to indicate this.
 
I'm hoping it's a PSU issue, it needs to be SSI compliant (another way of saying eps12v I believe), and supply 1.5A to the ethernet ports.  I think mine should be OK but I'm not 100% sure.  A friend at work is going to bring one in tomorrow so I'll see if that makes any difference.

Oh well, I've got an RME for the mobo and cpu now.  Scan are going to test them on return and send out a replacement.  They've agreed to first test any replacement parts so hopefully next time everything should be OK.
 

Well, the bitter conclusion of this particular tale of woe|stupidity has now been reached.
 
So I put what I considered to be a generous offer on the table to Scan; I'd accept the hit on the motherboard and buy the Gigabyte one I mentioned, plus some memory from them too.  They completely ignored this.  So that offer got withdrawn, and as the motherboard and CPU were already being returned to them I requested that the CPU be refunded and as before I'd take the hit on the motherboard.  They replied saying that the CPU could not be re-stocked, i.e. due to the cost of a £5 fan which I'd have happily paid for.  Given that, I then decided to take them up on their offer to get the board repaired for a fixed fee of £50.  Over a week goes by, I emailed them several more times chasing them up on what was happening and they finally respond by saying that there would be an additional 'service charge' (on top of the 'fixed price' of £50) of £25 + VAT because they were 'acting above and beyond their normal operating procedures' (their exact words) and that there would be no guarantee whatsoever regarding the efficacy of the repair nor the time frame in which the repair would take place in.
 
This from "a company with a high priority in Customer Service".  So they jerk me around for over a week ignoring my attempts to find out what was happening, then come back to me with an additional charge ne'er before mentioned because they're going so far out of their way with no promise whatsoever that throwing good money after bad would have any beneficial effect.
 
Well.  I kinda lost it at this point.  F*** you Scan! :-D 
 
I might have a Skylake i7 going relatively cheap fairly soon if anybody's interested.