LOL, that occurred to my old 4850, I thought it fried, so I departed and purchased a 4870 on sale, gave the 4850 to a friend and it worked fine on his pc: S retested it on mine and it yet didn't work...

I ruled out my ram, video card, all sata devices, all pci cards and fans, it's not akin to I have a spare am3 board or quad core laying around so I couldn't rule those out, but wtv.