the system that won't start

So, building a new system, I come along some problems, namely;

No BIOS!  Fantastic.  Motherboard has been RMA'd already, could be the processor.  But I get a hunch that I might be shorting it out.

Plug it in, take it out of chassis, etc, POWER BUTTON!

...Nothing.  Except for the sweet smell of burning plastic!  Seems I fried my case, I hope, or are there deeper seated problems afoot?

Well, that's pretty incoherent, so I'll take a guess that maybe you want to try a different PSU if you can find one. Of course, you might have already destroyed your motherboard.

I have a different PSU, but now I'm all in a panic about trying another one and actually frying the motherboard.  There are no burn marks on it, and it didn't make any noise.

It was plastic I smelled, and the smoke came from the case since the motherboard was outside of it on some cardboard to test what is really going on.