Hey Superdud, dont give up. Your monitor should be fine together with the adaptor that came with your card.
If your push the power, does the harddisk spin and get accessed?
If you have a CD Rom/DVD connected, does it search for a disk and then give up?
What i want to say is are you sure the monitor is black (while switched on and connected) and the comp boots (fans spin, drives accessed, beeps etc.)?
You have it connected to the correct one of the ports on the graphic card?
Did you get a motherboard with 2 x16 slots and did you plug in the card into the correct slot?