New system will not boot

Let me start by saying I have built about 10 systems on my own in the past and have never ran into this particular issue and read the "READ before posting about boot problems!" post as well.

I have the following
- MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
- CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
- (2X) XFX HD-487A-ZHDC Radeon HD 4870 1GB XXX 256-bit GDDR5
- XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler
- mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit
- Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

I put it together and it believe I have all the connectors correct (8 pin by the CPU and 24 pin main) but upon booting I don't get any audio beeps. The motherboard lights, fans spin, but I get 3 of the 4 blinking lights on the 2 video cards. I reseated everything (I have not tried moving the ram yet since it is under CPU cooler). No smoke or smell so I assume nothing fried either.

I made sure each video card has both the PCIe power connectors hooked up properly (2 each)but just am not getting anything that tells me where to look. I might be overlooking something obvious but does anyone know where I can find more info on what the blinking red lights might be for the XFX cards? I am on their site and not seeing any indicators.

I imagine it is possible that I missed something with the audio hookups but after tearing it down I just can't see what I am missing.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

I removed the 2nd card and the motherboard is flashing a ff and then a d3. I will work at taking out the 2nd stick of RAM and see where that gets me but the GPU is still flashing the same set of red lights X_XX

It sounds like you either need to raise the RAM voltage to get both sticks to work or you have a faulty stick of RAM. I would use one stick to get it to boot and then manually set the RAM speed/timings/voltage to the manufacturer's specs in the BIOS. You could then try both sticks of RAM. If it still doesn't work with both sticks, you should run Memtest86+ on each stick to find the faulty one.

Any time! Let us know how it goes.

So were you able to use both sticks of RAM after you set the RAM timings?

Good to hear of your now working rig