PC won't boot after freezing up

Homicidium · February 11, 2015

Hey Guys!

So, about a week ago I installed my new GPU, a Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X, and since then I've had problems with the system freezing up!

I've had similar problems with my old GTX660, with the difference being that the system would always boot up again after the system froze. With the 290 it gets stuck in a boot cycle where it constantly powers up and powers down and it won't boot up.

I thought that the PCIe slot might be broken, so I installed the 290 in the other PCIe slot, which fixed it temporarely, however this morning the system froze up again (while watching YouTube) and got stuck in the same boot cycle.

So, right now I'm using the on - board graphics of my 3570k, which work fine. However, now I'm kinda lost and I don't really know, what could be broken.

Either the card is broken, which honestly I don't think it is. The PCIe cable of my PSU could be broken, since the cable was ziptied for a long period (cable break). Or, which I think will most likely be the case, my motherboard is pretty much done, since I also recently had to reinstall Windows, because the system was all of a sudden corrupted and I couldn't reinstall Windows unless I switched to a different SATA port.

So, any idea on what could be broken? I really hope you guys can help me!

Thanks in advance,

Homicidium