ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi will only use iGPU

OK, hardware configuration is as follows:

AMD RyZen 9 7950X
ASRock B650 PG Riptide WiFi (BIOS v1.11 updated from v1.03)
G.Skill DDR5 6000 (2x 16GB) 32GB
MSI GTX 970
CoolerMaster Master Liquid 240mm RGB
Fractal Design Focus 2 Black

This was an initial build with some possible component changes in the future.

The build went well and the first boot booted rather quickly IMO. Video output was initially connected to the MSI GTX 970 and it auto entered into BIOS (I was expecting to have to manually enter UEFI). I made a few changes and noted that the graphics was set to ?œExternal??by default so I left that setting alone. The BIOS version was 1.03. I left it running for a while but wasn?™t ready to install an OS so I rebooted but was greeted with a blank screen thereafter. As a troubleshooting option I shutdown and switched the HDMI from the MSI GTX 970 to the onboard iGPU and voila it auto entered the UEFI.

So I updated BIOS thinking that was the issue - No joy

Did a little googling and found that in some cases users found that switching / toggling the CSM option in BIOS helped in such cases. So I tried it and switched inputs. This time the ASRock logo flashed for a split second using the MSI GTX 970 but was blank thereafter. Switching back to iGPU yielded a blank screen.

So in order to get something / anything on screen I cleared CMOS and reconfigured the BIOS essentially landing back where I started.

BTW, I left the RAM at default which was DDR5 4800 (everything set to auto) or something like that because I did t want to deal with any possible instabilities.

Any help on getting the MSI GTX 970 working would be greatly appreciated.   I can try a different video card but I doubt that would make a difference since it worked fine initially. Another possibility is I can try one of the other video card?™s outputs such as DisplayPort.

Any suggestions welcome!