Soumrak

Different PCIe slots were tried. She tried reseating all the cables. The correct power supply cables are in the correct spots. Many RAM configurations were tried, not sure what exactly, but so far as I know only 1 stick in any slot will work as of right now. The CPU and cooler were not reseated, but she told me shes not comfortable with doing that. But again, the system seems to work just fine with the GT 610 installed. There is no UPS or powerboard being used. We did get a reply somewhere else that the issue could just be dirty power so we were going to try a UPS as our next resort.

bump

Never said you need to play that way. I for one play at 1440p. But if you read the OP he says "I play on 4:3 1024x768 on low settings apart from shadows." Unless this is a typo, it appears as though they play this way by choice.

Lots of people (especially pros) play on video settings such as that.

There could be a chance that the game is still at it's default FPS cap of 300 fps. While my rig doesn't reach 300 fps at the settings I run, I notice my FPS is higher when I set the FPS cap to unlimited using the console command fps_max 0

Either stick of RAM will boot the system, but only if one is installed in any slot. But it will only boot with the GT 610, and not the GTX 1650 Super

Yup

So I built a PC for my girlfriend. - Ryzen 7 2700x - Asus ROG Strix B450-F - 16gb Trident Z RGB 3000mhz (2x8gb) - MSI GTX 1650 Super Gaming X - Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250gb NVMe - Seagate Barracuda 2tb HDD - EVGA BQ 500W I got all the parts, tested it, confirmed it all worked before installing windows, and a few games to make sure everything was running properly before doing some light overclocking to the graphics card. I surprised her with it and shipped it off to her place (she lives in another state). I uninstalled the graphics card to make sure the PCI-E slot gets damaged in shipping and used the box and packing foam the case came in as the main packaging. Now this is where things get weird. She receives the PC and installs the GPU and tries to boot up the PC. Nothing happens. After trying to reinstall it multiple times it still doesn't work. She had an old GT 610 laying around and she tried that to get it to boot. Still nothing until she tries it with only one stick of RAM. Now it boots to windows just fine. So she tried the 1650 super again. And again nothing. At this point it seems like a dead graphics card, so she sends it back to me to see if I can get it to work (along with both of the sticks of RAM). I receive the parts and everything works as expected in both the PCs I have here. I ship them back to her again and today she tries again to get it all to work. Same as before, the system will not work with both sticks of RAM, or with the 1650 super. It only seems to work when the GT 610 is installed with 8GB of RAM. I'm at a loss as to what's going on here since the GPU and RAM both work in other systems, and the PCI-E slot works with a different GPU so dead hardware doesn't seem to be the issue here. Just hardware that doesn't want to play nice with one another. Yes the motherboard BIOS was updated before shipping as well. And before I shipped the GPU back I flashed the BIOS on the card just to make sure. If anyone has any idea on whats happening or how to fix this, please let me know.