New(ish) build won't show anything on monitor

[adamcan2]

Had a decent build that I did 4 years ago. Smelled burning and everything went down. Not sure what failed, so decided it was time to make major upgrades. Kept HDD and GPU and replaced everything else. Now I have:

Chip: AMD Phenom II 955 Black
Board: MSI 870A-G54
PSU: Raidmax RX 630Z
GPU: BFG 8800 GTS 512

Everything spins up fine, but when I have either the 4 pin or 8 pin ATX 12v connector attached to the mobo, it runs for about 5 seconds and then shuts down. If I detach the 4/8 pin I can keep everything spinning, but of course I can't boot. Any ideas?

 

[davcon]

Sounds like the gpu may be toast.

 

[adamcan2]

I thought that might be the problem, so to diagnose it I picked up an EVGA GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 for $12 at a local retailer to see if that would work. The results were exactly the same. Of course it is always possible that the new one is bad too. The board and chipset "recommend" ATI (because AMD owns them, of course) but it is my understanding that the nVidia GPUs should work fine in the PCIe slots. Is this the case or might I have a compatibility issue?

 

[adamcan2]

Pulled battery, pulled everything off including cpu fan and chip, and reinstalled. With just PSU and chip/fan installed I got 2 beeps on startup (Parity error, if I am not mistaken), so that is progress! When I install the RAM--1 stick of Crucial 2GB 256MX64 DDR3PC3 8500--I get no beeps. In both cases the power comes on for 3-5 seconds and then goes off. Does this definitely mean dead stick? Or should I look in a different place first? If it helps, when I install the GPU but not the RAM, I get the two beeps as well.

One last question: if I have everything but the RAM installed would I expect to see anything at all on the monitor--maybe a start up screen from the onboard RAM? Because as it is nothing shows at all.