I just put together a new PC for gaming and poker:

AMD Phenom II x4 955 quad core
4 GB RAM (Geil)
550 OCZ Fatal1ty PSU
500 GB Western 7200 rpm
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 GPU
Asrock 870 Extreme3 motherboard


I pushed the power button on, everything hummed just beautifully, like its supposed to, but there was no video signal.. I checked that everything was connected properly and made sure the memory sticks and video card were snug. I turned it on again and no video. I tried switching the RAM into the other slots and also switched the GPU into the other PCI slot, yet nothing worked.

I've built PC's in the past, and always got it running when things didn't work on initial boot, but this time I'm stumped. I'm thinking its a defective graphics card but its fan is spinning after I boot it up.

No error beeps I assume? Try with one stick of RAM at a time would be my vote for next move. After that, if you have another video card available to you, try that and see if it does work. If that doesn't work, I dunno.

yeah, I'll try that next when I get out of bed lol.. I looked on AsRock's website and the RAM I bought is not on the memory QVL list, meaning it might not be compatible?? I thought that MOBO's usually aren't that picky with RAM.. or are they? I bought the MOBO/RAM in combo deal from Newegg, I would find that to be surprising if it doesn't support the RAM.


I just looked on compatible video cards and the 6870 is not on the compatibility list.. I think I might RMA this mobo and get a trusty ol Asus...

I'd call Asrock first. That GPU is about a week old. Give them a chance!

SOLVED...

Everything wasn't connected properly, I only connected one 6 pin PCI cable to the video card, not two lol..

That is pretty funny!

Actually similarish story, I have on not one but two occasions opened up my case, cleaned out my case and taken out my graphics cards to clean them individually (a couple of GTX 260's in SLI). Twice I put the cards back in and the screen didn't come up and I racked my brain for like an hour or two trying to figure out what was wrong, only to finally realize that I connected my monitors to the second card in the SLI array (you must plug it in to the first one). Plug the monitors into the first card and viola, everything is perfectly fine!

Glad you figured it out though bro, thanks for the follow up!

No problem! This is my first build in 4 years or so. I gave up in disgust when I built a new PC 3-4 months before Crysis came out and my new rig could not even play it lol.. After that I switched to consoles..

I got the itch to build a new one, so to speak, and while most of it came back fast, i was unfamiliar how to really connect a PCI Express card. The old ones didn't require connecting it to the PSU..

coincidentally, I'm installing Crysis Warhead now lol