Graphics card dead or other issue?

[Cnida]

I am aware that you must have seen this kind of post a thousand times. Yet after reading a ton of them I am still lost. My pc died several days ago after a year of relative problem free service, and I've tried out everything I could find over the days. After a lot of research and some progression I've hit another dead end, so any advise would be mostly appreciated.

About two weeks ago, while playing Hearthstone, the screen went black and sounds went off. I had to force the pc down by cutting off the power, as nothing else was working. Turning it back on all it did was making the fans spin. I opened the case, made sure all cables were properly seated, and everything booted like normal again. I did not find out what it actually was.

Few days ago in the morning the pc did not boot at all. Fans were spinning, no post, no beeps, nothing. I've about reseated everything, tried removing everything one by one. I practically followed multiple troubleshoot guides. Eventually I ended up resetting the CMOS while my graphics card was out, which allowed the pc to start on my onboard graphics card.

So it is finally running again, but without my graphics card. The pc is unable to detect it whatsoever. I've tried cleanly reinstalled the drivers, checked bios settings, moving it to the second pcie slot. Nothing worked there. Unfortunately I must wait till the weekend before I can take the graphics card to my boyfriend, to try if it works in his pc. Until then I only have my own tower to test things out.

My current guesses are:
The card is dead / My low power psu decided to turn me down / There something with the mobo? Did I miss anything? Any advice on next steps would be highly appreciated.

Specs:
ASRock B85M Pro4
Intel Core i5-4460
AMD Radeon R9 280
Crucial Ballistix 8g ram
be quiet! Straight Power 10 400W

 

[Hekarizblade]

My suggestion probably the PSU might be the problem you need more WATTS! like about 650W power supply and extra PCI-E 8pin and 4pin if necessary if your card needed.

 

[Cnida]

Thank you for your suggestion. That indeed was one of my main leads. I just found it strange behaviour, as it worked properly for a year. Even when 'overworking' it, would it just end on a whim like this? The fans of the graphics card are spinning, but the card itself is not detected at all. If feels that if it is a power issue, it would be more stuttering? I'm just writing down my thoughts, as I do not know much about how it works.

I did notice that when the display is seated in the graphics card while powering up the screen is black (which was expected). When moving it back to the onboard the screen stays black, and I have to restart first. Is it normal that the screen has to be plugged in at startup, or does this mean that it is trying to start on the graphics card and fails?

 

[desecravity]

A very simple test to see if the GPU is the problem or not is to simply plug directly into your mobo and see if the irregular behavior persists outside of running games. It sounds like a PSU issue to me. Even if the GPU is dead the PC will still boot, it just wont display anything until you plug your monitor into the mobo. It could also be that the PSU has insufficient wattage to power your system under load.

Edit: Yes it is normal for your display to still be black unless you restart after plugging into the mobo.

 

[Cnida]

I did another test, and currently the pc is giving a post beep when the display is plugged in to the gpu. I guess that actually is a bad sign, as I understand that that is a gpu problem?
Is the PSU loaded that much more just from booting using the graphics card?

 

[Hekarizblade]

Maybe the post beep will be the GPU reseat in the pci-e slot or the ram try use 1 stick of ram and try again if still not working try resetting the bios.

 

[Cnida]

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, so correct me if I'm doing things wrong.
With the screen plugged into the GPU, removing one stick of ram did nothing. Removing both gave the expected no-memory error beep.
I believe I already did a bios reset after reseating the GPU. I did it again nonetheless, no changes there either. One normal short beep and no screen.