Thank you very much for your help Entoptic.

I can steal a different video card from a computer here to try that out. I agree that it's probably the mobo, since with the video card removed it should be making some beeps, but isn't. I'll try the different one anyway.

I definitely won't ship them my hard drives now I know thats an option. Too much data on there I don't want to lose.

Thanks again, makes me feel more confident about my data at the very least .