PCI-x1 card not working in PCI-x4 slot.

[Zedbird]

Looking to the community for help with this weird issue I have. I'm building my friend a low end gaming pc with spare parts I have lying around and what I can scrounge up from friends. I was given two identical Dell Optiplex 9010's with a i7 3770. Pulled the Ram from one to give it 16gb of Ram upgraded to a 600w PSU and put an GTX 770 4gb in. Here's the problem. The 770 blocks the PCIEx1 slot so to install the wifi card I have to install it in the PCEI x16 bottom slot at x4 speed. This should be no problem, but it does not work. Black screen. No post. I believe the slot is somehow designated display only. When I put the 770 in the bottom x4 slot and put the wifi card in the x1 slot everything works, but I want PCIE x16 speed so this is unacceptable. Any ideas? I know I can buy a PCIE x1 riser, but they are kind of expensive right now and with everything going on it would take a month to get here. I'm hoping maybe there is something in the bios that I'm missing that needs to changed.

 

Update:

To make thing weirder the PCIE x1 card works fine in the top PCIE x16 top slot , but that would mean by GPU would have to be in the bottom PCIE x4 slot at slower speed with fans directly against the bottom of the case.