Serious Mobo issue
 

Ok, so this is the second board in this rig. The first one was an ASROCK Extreme 3 990FX board. It was DOA. This current board is a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3. It shows the Logo screen for ~.5 seconds and dissapears. Then, it initially showed a screen talking about a missing map file and loading a startup config file or something. If it loaded the config file, it dropped me to a SHELL> prompt. I cleared the CMOS and now it does the split second logo screen and then a blank screen.

The rig is made up of these components: (I am listing only what I am using to test for post)

Corsair HX-750 GOLD
GIGABYTE GA-990FX-UD3 Rev.3.0
AMD FX 8350 w/ stock fan
Gskill Sniper 1866 4GB (also tested with Gskill Ripjaws 1600)
GIGABYTE HD7970

Are you testing this in a case? Sounds like a possible short caused by the motherboard making metal contact.

it is sitting outside the case on a cardboard box (the mobo box)

Two boards that don't work... Try a different PSU and CPU.

Im thinking Im just going to have him send the stuff back and Ill sell him my rig and switch to intel.

If you think amd is causing this issue, then indeed you should buy intel:) however, personally I would go with what erocker said.
Try replacing either cpu, psu, or perhaps the vid card if both others dont solve your issues either.

It was the PSU. we are RMA-ing it. I did ont think AMD was the issue. I have an AMD rig. I was going to sell him mine and make the jump to intel.

Glad to hear you got it solved:)