Z68XP-UD3P not booting to POST or BIOS, keeps restarting after PCI-E install

[VR_User]

Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P
Intel i7 2600k
GeForce GTX 980
16GB Ram
750W Power supply

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Hi guys,

My system has been working perfectly fine for many years now, I haven't had any problems with it up until yesterday night.

Recently I made a few minor upgrades, I replaced my graphics card, and did a little overclock on the CPU to 4.0-4.2GHz. I tested everything out and it was working great, graphics all good, CPU clock and temps all good. No crashes, errors, blue screens or anything to say something was wrong. I had it running like this for a couple of weeks. The next thing I needed was some USB 3.0 ports, so I ordered a Inateck PCI-E USB 3.0 card (the one recommended by Oculus).

Yesterday I installed the PCI-E USB 3.0 card, made sure it was installed correctly, followed the instructions provided and gave it power through SATA connection. I powered on the system but could not boot, tried a few times but I realised it was restarting on its own after about 2-3 seconds. It is not even going to POST or BIOS.

I did a search online to see if any others had similar problems, there was nothing for the same card, but people have reported the same restart problem with other types of PCI-E cards (sound, WiFi, graphics). In most cases it seemed to be a compatibility issue. So then I thought the card was either faulty or incompatible, and I decided to remove it while I figure out what it was.

I removed the card, powered up the system, and the same thing kept happening. It just kept restarting with nothing on the display. This got me really worried. Did the card break my computer? I unplugged the computer and checked all connections, everything looked fine. Powered up and same again. I looked online for more solutions, I found many posts that describe the exact same problem but most of them encountered the problem unexpectedly or on a brand new build, some managed to fix it, others didn't. There doesn't seem to be a consistent reason as to why it happens.

I removed the motherboard battery after reading some posts, I had it out for about 15 minutes, it didn't help. I don't know what to do, I really need some help. Everything looks like it is powering up fine, fans spin, LEDs light up, hard drive and disk drive both spin, sometimes it makes a single beep. But after a few seconds it just restarts and does the same thing until I switch off the power supply.

Please help!

[shadowsports]

Tough to say what's causing this.  On the surface it sounds like a problem related to the OC, but you also said that was working prior to adding in the card.

Out of curiosity, what slot did you install the add-on card into?  One of the 1x slots?

What I would try next.  Disconnect power from the board, leave the battery installed.  Use the CLR_CMOS jumper to reset the BIOS.  If you don't have a jumper, you can use a flat blade screwdriver and hold it there for 10 sec.  Then reconnect power and retest.  If no luck, I'd try to invoke boot from the back up BIOS.  I'd also remove one stick of RAM while you troubleshoot.

FYI, the slots on your board are all PCIe 2.0 spec.  The card is 3.0 but should be backwards compatible.  You don't want to put it in the x8 slot as this will force your GPU to run at x8.  Good luck