Maybe its a long shot but try this first, uninstall the GTX card.
Next, have him "find" a dvi cable and hook it up to the motherboards vga ports.
If his monitor/TV does not support it, have him take it into a reliable computer shop.
Turn on the machine without the card and no optical drives.
If he is lucky it will kick on automatically, he will need to go into this bios,
Have him choose pci graphics card from the hardware configuration panel.
Save those settings and reboot, turn off the machine and put the card back in.
If his card has a pcie connector, make sure the psu he gots can use that.
Turn on the computer once more, if I am right, his motherboard will pick up the card immediately.
The vga bios splash screen should come up first, next the motherboard bios come second, finally he can start the os install process.
Find out what type of ram he has and manufacturer card he has, at times, it maybe the hardware components fault and not the mobo/cpu parts.
