Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3: not sure what's wrong

[twobases]

Well I recently bought a bunch of components from newegg to build a new computer. These included:
-Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
-Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz
-Corsair XMS2 DDR2 667 2GB (2x1GB)
-LG 4167B DVD Burner
-Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA 3Gb/s
-XFX 7600 GT 256MB
-FSP 450W PSU

I put everything together in my case and turned the computer on. And while it did turn on, I soon found out that it was running very slowly. Getting to the bios sometimes takes forever. Installing Win XP has been impossible because it takes 20min just to get to the install screen. And once there, it is barely responsive.

I have been trying desperately to figure out what's wrong. Initial boot-up screens indicate that 2GB of ram are being recognized as Dual Channel, and it detects the CPU, Video Card, hard drive, and dvd burner. I managed to upgrade the flash bios on the DS3 from F4 to F6. This uggrade did not improve performance. I have experimented with AHCI or IDE, and Native or Legacy. These changes didn't help either.

Anyone know what might be wrong or have some ideas? I haven't done any overclocking, and I also removed the jumper from the hard drive so it would be in SATA 3GB/s mode. I've also made the SATA driver floppy for XP installation, thoguh this isn't of much use until I get the computer running faster.

All help is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Compellor]

I would first try clearing the CMOS to see if that helps. It's very possible your motherboard is defective since BIOS access is really slow.

 

[vailr]

When in doubt, blame the power supply.
There may be no alternative to simply swapping out each component with another similar "known good" component.

 

[twobases]

Well I guess I need to try each component separately then. Wish there was some easier way. Thanks for the advice.