How depressing....

I got a Soyo K7-VME mobo, Athlon 2400 mobile and Arctic cooling Copper Silent 2M. Waited all week to begin the building (wife went out of town today), and I think I've done a Bad Thing to the cpu. I'm trying to do a POST test, so this is all sitting outside the case, bare minimum connections. There's no drives connected yet.

I put a little copper paste on it (perhaps a little too much, it's spilled over the side of the die a little bit, but doesn't seem to be touching any other bared metal on the die) and attached the heatsink/fan. Trouble is, the bugger is so big it actually touches the place where the cpu fan plugs into the mobo. I think the four pads on the die are making up the difference in pressure, but who knows ?

I have a brand new 350W psu and *it* starts, but there's no beep and no video from the mobo itself. I'm pretty upset about it - this is my first build and I spent ages getting the parts at great prices (newegg - you rock !) but I seem to have messed it up. Is there anything I can do, or should I RMA the CPU ?

Yours un-techily
Brian