system freezing not ram, cpu, gpu or heat but bad sata cable

[darknkreepy3#]

the system was showing some strange horizontal striping artifacts and programs just stopped loading.
then windows would not reboot and only 4 of 6 sata drives would show up in boot and then freeze win loading.
after taking off all usb3 drives if they were asleep maybe causing it to freeze. no.
maybe sli and the 970 gpus were failing or overheating. take one out. nope.
maybe the ram was failing, take all 4 x8 out. 2 x8 back in. nope.
try the sata board with molex power in the haf-x 942. one cable at a time.
reset bios. forgot that sata needs to be forced to allow hot plug of drives to test.
sure enough after trying to flip cables, it was one of 8 connected sata cables.
replacing it and all was fine.
there was no obvious mechanical damage so it might have shorted out or bent a bit too much in a fold invisible to the eye.