As the title suggests, Big Beastie underwent a complete makeover.  Turns out my Cooler Master 1200w PSU was the culprit with my Threadripper build and causing the mobo and CPU to short out.  It was throwing out 18v - 20v on the 12v rail, thus shorting out all that was connected to it. 

I'm not expecting CoolerMaster to compensate me for the damage [about 1400 bucks] so I've moved on and Big Beastie now has an Intel 10th Gen Core i7 10700F LGA 1200 CPU mounted on an ASUS ROG Strix Z490-F LGA1200 ATX motherboard.  The CPU is locked but that's okay, I wasn't planning to overclock anyhow.

Yeah, I know, I wasn't ever going to get another ASUS board, but it was at a good price and it suited my budget more than other LGA 1200 boards I looked at.  This time, however, I did not build it myself.  I've found a great techie here in Launceston and he did the main build.  I just installed the HDDs when I got it home... would have been way too heavy get home otherwise.

Another thing I got a while ago is an ASUS HYPER M.2 x16 V2 RAID Card.  It holds 4x NVME M.2 SSDs in RAID formation, which will be used to house the OS, theoretically boosting its speed and performance.  The NVMEs I chose are WD 250gb... didn't see the point of going bigger than a total of 1000gb for an OS and programs, and the price for the 4 suited my budget [228.00]

As for the 2 Threadripper motherboards, I can get them repaired, albeit at my own cost, but I'm not too sure about the CPU.  I am still waiting on a reply from AMD to ascertain what I do there.

Anyhow, grub's up, gotta go.