Issues with PCI-E 3.0 and my GPU

I am reaching out today because I find myself in desperate need of some technical guidance!

My current hardware setup consists of an Intel Core i5 4690 processor paired with an Nvidia GTX 750 ti graphics card, 8 GB of RAM, an H87 motherboard, a 1 TB hard drive, a 120 GB Kingston SSD, an EVGA 500W PSU, and I am running Windows 10. It is quite perplexing because the computer operates flawlessly until the very moment I install the graphics drivers, at which point everything descends into chaos. Once those drivers are installed and I restart the machine, right after the initial Windows loading screen appears, my monitor simply goes black and displays a "no signal" message; occasionally, it is even more frustrating, as the motherboard logo fails to appear entirely, or the monitor refuses to wake up at all😠. By some stroke of sheer luck, I occasionally manage to enter the BIOS and manually adjust the PCI-E 3.0 slot settings to run at GEN2 (PCI-E 2.0 x16), which allows the system to boot normally, yet the instability persists; whenever there is even a moderate workload—or even just while browsing the web—the system freezes for a few seconds before throwing a kernel error stating that the driver has crashed. Curiously, if I force that same PCI-E slot to run at GEN1 (PCI-E 1.1 x16), the system remains perfectly stable without any crashes or issues whatsoever. If I were to move the graphics card to a different PCI-E slot that functions at 2.0 x4, the system boots and runs without issue, though I would suffer a significant loss in performance. Since this Nvidia GTX 750 ti draws all its power directly from the motherboard slot, I have no external power connectors available to plug into the power supply
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Thank you all so much in advance for your assistance

Give the BIOS an update (if one's available)

Timothy Kim60 said:Maybe try updating the BIOS if there's an option available for it.

I am actually running the very latest BIOS version available, dated April 10, 2015, because I was absolutely required to perform that specific update before I could upgrade my processor to the Intel Core i5 4690.

Maybe try testing the GPU on another rig? Also, how old is that power supply?

I went ahead and tested a friend's graphics card in my own rig, and since I ran into the exact same issue, I can say with absolute certainty that we can rule out the GPU as the culprit here. My power supply is only about eighteen months old and has been performing flawlessly without a single hiccup, so there's really no reason to suspect it's failing.

And just like that, my graphics card kicked the bucket 🙂