It looks like my video card was going bad. I definitely prefer that outcome to my motherboard needing to be replaced. Aside from cost it’s a pain in the arse to remove CPU fans.
I swung by Best Buy after work and picked up a dinky little PNY nVidia 8600 GT to test things. Plugged it in and the monitor sprung to life… current plan is to return this card to Best Buy and get a much better one from NewEgg for about the same price.
In other news, my dad may be sending some money my way in the way of a Christmas advance for a Mac mini! Now I just have to play the waiting game and hope Apple rolls out an updated line in September…
sometimes cpu fans aren’t hard to replace… but remember that time we built one and discovered that AMD’s hate having their fan touched?