welp, there was a thread a while back where Dane was going over some troubleshooting on his build, and I made some reference like "that's the kind of stuff that would happen to me".
well, new computer arrived, monitor, desk, chair etc, over the course of 2 weeks. last weekend finally unboxed and began assembly and set up of everything. finally got to the computer, unboxed and started to power on and set up.
...nothing on display. hmmm. verified I was on plugged into the DP of the GPU. nada. grabbed an HDMI and tried off the mobo....nada. Thinking maybe my monitor wasn't working. set up my ps4 on HDMI...voila. Beautiful screen.
led lights and fans on the computer were on when I powered on...but that's where it ended. plugged direct into outlet....nada. keyboard wasn't lighting up so I plugged into every available USB....nada. Plugged it into my laptop, voila...worked. No beep or anything when powering on.
Finally after a few hours, took some pictures and emailed the tech support. talked to them today and they listen to all the steps I took, and they said well....looks like something is either not plugged in correctly inside, or possible power supply issue or something else.
They're shipping me another one, and emailed me a shipping label to send this one back.
...
I knew something like this would happen. Oh well. It's ok, they were helpful and responsive so it's probably just a shit happens scenario. So hopefully the new one will fire up with no problems.