Quick build question

I have two different systems I am trying to build both based on Asus 680i SLI boards (Striker Extreme and P5N32E-SLI). Both have boards that have been sitting for a while. I have reseated all cards and all RAM (even swapped out a couple of sticks). I know my PSUs are good (have a PSU tester and they both show good on all wires). Both are booting up and I get the DVD spinning up but the BIOS never shows up. I have not swapped out video cards (The Striker is in SLI with two eVGA 8800GTXs and watercooled so that is no easy task) but neither one of them even gets to the point of showing the BIOS nor do they sound like they are going much past the DVD drives posting and an initial hard drive initialization. Could it be something as simple as the BIOS battery is dead? I am pretty sure all the hardware is good so I am kind of stumped.

You may have to put in an older CPU, update the BIOS, and then put your CPU in.

The issue is probably that the BIOS that came with the board doesn't support the newer processor/voltages that you have in there.

If it was a RAM issue then the motherboard should beep at you. If it isn't then it is most likely a board/cpu issue.

A computer can work just fine without a CMOS battery, it's just that the BIOS would be reset all the time.

Both of these boards have previously worked with the current hardware. I tore them down in one case because I had a cable that fried (wasn't connected to anything other than the PSU at the time so I know it is not the hardware being damaged) and in the other case to retrofit back to air-cooled from watercooled. The Striker does stop on the RAM Init phase of the boot up (shows on the LCD poster on the back) but like I said, it seems as if the BIOS is not even intializing at all (it gets past CPU Init but stops at RAM). That is what I thought about the battery but figure the BIOS resetting every time would be kind of a pain.