Well, the good news is I got 7 570's working in windows 7 with the mod! It was a simple power problem..
The bad news is, I thought it would be a 'great' idea to test the power theory by using 1 pcie chain + 1 molex chain from my 4 card rig that was using an ancient DFI lan party mobo.. + hx850i with that pc idling in "bios screen mode"..
First I tried 1 480 + 6 570's that worked fine.. then tried all 7 570's (powering 2 risers/cards with second psu..) worked fine.. both with multiple reboots to make sure it was working for real.
All was good until trying to hook the 4 card rig back up.. bios beeps.. thought it was BS'ing me at first but, guess not

.. power color red dragon 480 + a 470 that was minding it's own dam business in the motherboard slot -- both apparently dead.(tried in 3 pc's. fans don't even spin.. nothing in device manager/atiflash..)
FML! I guess. 1 480 & 470 survived at least.. grr.
Glad it says newbie under my nick some times..