The three things I needed to finally upgrade to a 970 finally arrived; An EVGA 500w PSU, my EVGA 970 SSC (obviously), and my Fractal Core 2300 (old case was too small).
I transferred everything into my new case and the set up was fairly easy, only problem was that my computer.. or my 970 was acting up. Let me try to explain.
After I moved everything into my new case I booted up to see if it even worked, without any graphics card at all, just using Intel Integrated Graphics.
Sure enough it did! So next I put in my 970 in and booted up, it gave me this error. It's happened to me before when I accidentally added my 2nd monitor to my integrated connector. I just shutdown and plugged my HDMI into the GPU, no sweat. Now when I booted up it gave me a loud beep followed by a pause then with a few more beeps.
I tried using another monitor I have, I only have a VGA cable on hand so I used the VGA-DVI adapter that came with the 970, and the same error occurred.
I have pictures below of the internals of my case. I do have a PCIx16 slot, It says so on my motherboard and I removed the video card and reinserted it a few times with no success. If you're wondering I can still boot into windows if I remove my 970 and even if I use my old GPU (my GeForce GT 635). I also discharged any static several times on a separate PSU and my case chasis, plus I'm in California so it isn't that cold around here for static to build up.
Here are my specs
EVGA 970 SSC
EVGA 500w PSU
i5 4440
Mobo is from a Dell XPS 8700
-Thanks to anyone who can help, I'm just dying to use my 970.