Oh, another note. That motherboard you suggested was microATX. I have never seen a mobo so freaking small! it only had 1 chassis fan connector so I had to power the second one another way.
So I just chatted online with another person from MS that also said I should be able to activate it. The other thing I didn't mention is that I did the 'activation by phone' last night and it said it was successful but it still showed as not activated. So I'm not sure if it worked or not.Either way, I'm going to check again tonight and if it didn't activate I'm going to call them. I got a number from the person I chatted with.
Came home today and finished installing 8.1. I think getting it to register as being activated just required a reboot. SO, for anyone going through this with an OEM copy, start the windows activation and choose the 'phone activation' method. It is fully automated. It will ask you for 9 sets of numbers that you say or key into the phone. Then it will read you back a set of 7 numbers (I think). After that, it will ask you how many times you have installed the OS (I said "one") and then it will ask how many other computers it was installed on (I think that was the question) and I said "zero". It said to proceed and when I did it said all was good.I did the phone activation Thursday night and going to the computer's properties did not immediately show that it was activated which is why I got worried. BUT, all is good now. I don't have to purchase another license!! :-)