What type of video card do you have? Is it securely in the PCIe or AGP slot? Is the monitor turned on and hoocked up to the video card? Do you hear any beeps at all when you turn on the computer?

The video is built into the mother board, AGP 8X Graphics Interface, but I think the bigger problem is the lack of the beep when I first turn the computer on

Could it be the RAM?

unlikely to be RAM cos you would get lots of beeps presuming that you have the internal speaker wired in correctly. firstly i would check that your internal speaker is wired in properly cos without this you wouldnt have any beeps. bear in mind though that the internal speaker is absolutely nothing to do with the onboard sound card. see if the computer gives you any beeps then. it should do to alert you to the lack of a component ie a video card.

secondly ensure that all your connections to your onboard video are as instructed. if it helps turn the instruction manual so that it matches the orientation of your motherboard inside the case. this often helps immensly when working out connections. it is your diagram and as any techie would know, when taking your PC to bits it is important to diagram the whereabouts of everything and what jumpers are set to what positions. if none of this works i would possibly say that there is something more in depth or you have a dead board.

regarding ide channels your hard disk drive(s) should always run from the primary IDE and all optical drives ie cd/dvd drives from the secondary IDE. This is dependable on whether your hard drives are IDE or RAID drives though. these days they usually tend to be IDE.

please let me know what system configuration/components you have.