Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes

[ern88]

Biggest mistake was when I bought my first PC back in the 90's and getting a Riva TNT 2 card. The thing was crap. Then replaced a week later with a 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000. Which was a great card.

 

[TexasDragon3907]

This literally happened today, a week ago I thought I found a pretty good deal on an MSI r7 360 for basically 80$. Bought it thinking, "man I'm probably not gonna find a better deal for a while." Fast forward to today, walk into Geometry, my friend who'd I told I was building a Pc walks and says "Hey so I was at this convention at an alienware booth and won a GTX960, I don't need it but since you told me you're building a PC i'll sell it to you for somewhere around 60/100 bucks".

Le me: "WELL F#CK YOU TOO UNIVERSE!"

Basically already spent all my graphics card money so...

 

[Simthaniel]

Never air dust your computer while it is running. Seems like an obvious thing, sure. But being tied to your computer, reliant on that connection, it can be tough to bring yourself to turn it off for something as simple as regular maintenance. Thinking, well, I'd like to keep Netflix up and running while I perform this dumb chore, it might not dawn on you to turn the thing off. Lesson learned the hard way.

Those little red pipe sticks you plug into the end of the canned air? Sometimes they shoot off of the nozzle at high velocity. Sometimes they shoot into the spinning fans of your running graphics card, if you happen to try dusting while your machine is on. Sometimes you panic after realizing you've harpooned your very expensive graphics card. Sometimes.

Now that you have my embarrassing confession, let's hear yours.

We want to know what your biggest mistake building PCs has been as it relates to Graphics Cards. What mishaps have you had that make you look back and go "Oh man, what the heck was I thinking?".

Consider this a no judgement zone - and a fun means of tech-related therapy.

Include images, if you've got 'em. If we get some good horror stories, we might even turn this into an editorial feature and showcase our communal misery.

-JP

p.s. Check out the other threads, too.
• Post Your Biggest CPUs Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Motherboard Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Storage Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Cooling, Cases, & PSUs Mistakes

My biggest mistake was buying a sucky graphics card when there are multiple graphics cards that are 10x better for only a few more dollars

 

[atwspoon]

About 8 years ago, 9th grade. My older brother told me if I put up $200 of my lawn mowing money, he would match it and get me two graphics cards. I got two 8800 GTS from EVGA. Call of Duty Modern Warfare had just come out, so I wanted to play it with high fps. I don't know what the overclocking method I used was, but the settings I chose were far too high, and so a minute into play CoD4 there was a loud crack and pop, and a spark shot out from inside of my case. Apparently my psu had blown from the overclocking experiment haha. Oh pre-80+ certified power supplies! My computer started up just fine after I got a new psu, so nothing else damaged.

 

[gofasterstripes]

Circa 2000....

Received OEM Geforce 2GTS at bargain price! Enjoyed much gaming.....and eventually started overclocking it. Went well enough (though it began to run a little warm), so I wanted to fit another HSF.

While holding the card and pondering this, I sat down in a flock chair....and killed it stone dead with static.

I got a Radeon after that. Three pipelines, 32bit, yeah!

 

[PHOENiX-117]

Cleaned my gtx690 with water while it was running:moron:

 

[Bill2002]

I had a 780ti, which had it's locking mechanism bent outwards, in such a way that it went into the PCI slot without resistance, but removing it ended up taking a PCI express lane off of TWO motherboards. I didn't even know what was going on either.

 

[Gavin Mathis]

Overclocking my Radeon 6570's memory clock by like 50% and killing it.

 

[Thomas_115]

ok here goes.
- Bought a new gaming PC. (self picked)
- Looked for some GPUs online and researched for a while
- Picked up R9 390 STRIX and was more than happy to have 8gb and 512 bit specs.
- Shows off in-front of my Nvidia fanboys friends.
- Beat their cards with ultra settings in FPS.
- Nvidia released 1070 and 1080 powerful than titan x and cost like 390.
- Nvidia fanboys friends looked at me and laugh. No jokes or anything just whenever they looked at me they laugh.
- Blamed Nvidia for ruining my life.
- Sits in the corner and cried all night.
- Never had friends again

 

[mclightning88]

A long time ago (well ok, 4 years ago), I bought a 6570 (1GB) and thought the memory was GDDR5 when it was GDDR3. Waste of $50.

 

[chaosmassive]

years ago, I started gpu hunt for GT 220 replacement, asking whether they selling 'X' GPU
the shopkeeper said something like this in conversation, "We not selling GPU that you're looking for,
but we have "Y" GPU which have moar memory" ZOMG" 4GB 64 bit for around 1M IDR (100 USD i believe)
worst is like 90% of my local computer shop using same tactic to sell their shitty 64 bit GPU with marketed memory

 

[Nhyrum]

buying a GPU from china... yeah got BSOD as soon as it booted

 

[Multimzain1]

trying to crossfire a 7870xt with an r9 380 (2 different architectures) on a 520 power supply and an overclocked fx 9590, probably the biggest screw is the history of humanity.

 

[wh3resmycar]

r9 280x from sapphire.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2288261/amd-catalyst-driver-special-submission-form.html

it was fine, no "actual" defects. apart from AMD not able to put Adaptive/Vsync into it's own driver.

 

[kaiteck]

My biggest mistake was that I chose gtx 650 2gb OC edition when there's gtx 750 lying around at cheaper price.

My main priority at that time was to get 2DVI ports so I just chose gtx 650 over gtx 750, not realizing gtx 750 also had 2DVI ports as well.

 

[-Fran-]

My biggest GPU mistake was also my first, in my little padawan days: when the AGP slot was a new thing, I thought every single GPU made for it was going to be good, so I just asked for a "new" video card to my mom and she indeed followed my instructions for it... SiS 6326 8MB AGP! Had a huge "3D" message slapped into the box and a ground breaking 8MB of memory using a brand new AGP 2X BUS.

BIGGEST. MISTAKE. EVER.

A year later, after taking into heart this epic failure of mine, I went for a cheap as hell TNT2 M64 32MB AGP 8X. Now I could run a lot of games! And then TnL came out... And the fun circle began.

Cheers! 😛

 

[Kirby_1]

system spec
amd radeon r7 265 adapter DVI-I DL and DVI-A SL
mobo: EMX-MCP61D3-iCafe BIOS V1.2
Psu: VP PRO 600watts
have 4gb ram
windwos 10 pro


my problem is when i plug my vga into my gpu with adapter of DVI-I DL its always say no cable connected while the other.DVI-A SL only say is no display how that coul be happening.
More about : gpu display

i have this problem no display

 

[DustinV]

system spec
amd radeon r7 265 adapter DVI-I DL and DVI-A SL
mobo: EMX-MCP61D3-iCafe BIOS V1.2
Psu: VP PRO 600watts
have 4gb ram
windwos 10 pro


my problem is when i plug my vga into my gpu with adapter of DVI-I DL its always say no cable connected while the other.DVI-A SL only say is no display how that coul be happening.
More about : gpu display

i have this problem no display

If you were looking for a solution to your problem you should start a new thread. This thread is about posting dumb mistakes we have made.

 

[alth0triplemadang]

Yeah mistakes lol

 

[jenojaxx]

My own biggest mistake of GPUs:

Flashing crappy BIOS update from TechPowerup website for my GAINWARD 9600GT.
After flashing the BIOS, now i get a beautiful pattern, lines, and dots with lots of colours! (maybe, i call this as art)
Well... I enjoyed for watching that "art" for 5+ hours while thinking how to fix this!

Thanks TechPowerup! you gave me an amazingly destructible "art" for my poor 9600GT!
cheers all i love you tech power UP

image coming soon!!!

LOL the same happened to me , only difference is that i modified the bios to get higher voltage and mhz . Needless to say , it never came back to life , only patterns

 

[Matt_86]

I bought a titan x, 🙁

 

[TheyThinkImNinja]

When i built my first computer, I got everything assembled and it wouldnt turn on, i was scared shitless so i called my father into the room and he moved one jumper into another position and it booted up properly. to this day i will never forget about the ClearRTC jumper.

 

[alth0triplemadang]

My second mistakes of GPUs

my dad bought me an GTX 460se...

 

[alth0triplemadang]

here's the image. Sorry for late post.

again, love YOU tech POWERUP

 

[Airbus580]

Never air dust your computer while it is running. Seems like an obvious thing, sure. But being tied to your computer, reliant on that connection, it can be tough to bring yourself to turn it off for something as simple as regular maintenance. Thinking, well, I'd like to keep Netflix up and running while I perform this dumb chore, it might not dawn on you to turn the thing off. Lesson learned the hard way.

Those little red pipe sticks you plug into the end of the canned air? Sometimes they shoot off of the nozzle at high velocity. Sometimes they shoot into the spinning fans of your running graphics card, if you happen to try dusting while your machine is on. Sometimes you panic after realizing you've harpooned your very expensive graphics card. Sometimes.

I used a brush to wipe off dust on my GPU on the backside (no backplate). Damn I smelled a burn and I saw my monitor all kinds of GPU issues (artifacts etc.). I panicked I turned off the computer for a while (disconnected the power pin from the GPU). After that I tested my GPU for stability I can't thank enough that it's still working like normal and still using it today