Motherboard does not boot with Descrete graphics card, after total system replacement

hostile_being

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Feb 4, 2012
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Hello everyone,
Quite a long story here, sorry about that! See end for TL;DR
I come asking for help for one of my friends, who is on the verge of throwing his entire system out a window at the moment. The system specs are such: (brackets show replaced parts)

CPU: Intel i5-3570
(i5-4670k)

CPU Cooler: Intel Stock
(Corsair H100i)

GPU: ASUS 7950 DCU2
(ASUS 280X DCU2)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H rev 1.0
(Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H)

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws-X 16GB 1600MHz
(Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1600MHz)

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 875W
(Corsair AX-860)

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 120GB

HDD: Seagate 2TB

Case: Coolermaster HAF-X


Since buying and assembling his system, he has been getting continuous boot failures, whereby his motherboard is unable to POST at all when the GPU is plugged in, yet does so fine on integrated graphics. This started out of the blue only a few days after putting in his 7950. It worked absolutely fine for that time and one day refused to boot at all. At the press of the power button, fans started, motherboard LEDs came on, but no beep from the chassis speaker and there was no signal from the graphics card - leaving the display blank with a "No Video Input" message.

We immediately thought it was a power issue, and having torn the system apart and reassembled it twice to ensure no power cable was left loose, my friend opted to replace the PSU - a Thermaltake Toughpower 875W, more than enough for his single-GPU system, for a higher quality Corsair AX-860W. After chucking it into the system, the motherboard finally did POST and windows booted - for about 45 minutes before crashing and reverting back to the old state with no POST and no GPU output. Now we thought it was the GPU, and while he was waiting for an ASUS RMA, I tried his 7950 in my system. Usually sporting a modest 6950, my system handled the 7950 seemingly fine allowing an entire day of gaming and numerous stress tests, until the second day where suddenly my system started doing the exact same thing as my friend's at boot. Replacing it with my 6950 fixed this immediately.

Hence, the 7950 went off to ASUS Service, who sent it back a while later saying nothing was wrong with it... Annoyed at this, my friend lashed out and bought an entirely new graphics card - an ASUS 280X DCU2. Once again, he was happily playing games for just one day, when the exact same thing happened on his next boot the following day. This should cancel out the GPU as cause, it would be VERY unlikely to get 2 dodgey cards in a row.

The next thing to do was blame the motherboard, and he decided to replace not just that, but upgrade to a Haswell CPU and Motherboard, with new RAM also. The only things remaining from the original system are the case, hdd and ssd. But yet again, after an almost COMPLETE system replacement, his system with the new motherboard left him with the exact same issue as at the start after a first day of tentative testing.

TL;DR - Motherboard wouldn't POST with graphics card in it, replaced CPU, Motherboard, GPU, PSU and RAM, still unable to get the motherboard to boot past the first day or two of a hardware change.

So, if you guys can think of anything that could be causing this please help! Else, we may have to stick to the notion that the case is, indeed, haunted :/
Thanks for your time.
 
It might be a monitor issue or a short. Tell your friend to test for few days the system outside the case (motherboard on its box), after replacing the graphics card.
If OK, check the standoffs, or anything that might short the board.
If still the same, then I suspect the monitor... but hard to say.
 

hostile_being

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Feb 4, 2012
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Thanks for the reply
I'm afraid we've tried new monitors and DVI cables also, but to no avail. Oddly enough with a new monitor and cable the system booted long enough for us to see lots of graphical artifacts before crashing and not allowing us to start it again. This certainly sounds like another faulty GPU, but what are the chances for 2 faulty ones in a row?
 

hostile_being

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Feb 4, 2012
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My friend eventually got a new 280X after RMAing it again. This one seems to work fine. So it definitely appears that the previous Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H motherboard was damaging graphics cards, and managed to chew its way through 3 functioning graphics cards (another 7950 that didn't seem relevant to the thread) before we figured out what was wrong. The new motherboard and new GPU that was NOT run in the old motherboard seem to be running fine.

This is the first time I've ever heard of a motherboard doing such a thing...