Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes

[LazerL0rd -]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

 

[Epicness937]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

my sister removed her gpu fan because it took up too much space......
lucky i was there and fixed it 2 1/2 hours later because she was complaining of bluescreens when gaming i look on the side of her desk and see THE FAN that needed to be on her gtx 770

 

[alth0triplemadang]

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

If it never come back to life, at least you have a beautiful pattern. Pattern are beautiful, isn`t it?

 

[Thomas_115]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

my sister removed her gpu fan because it took up too much space......
lucky i was there and fixed it 2 1/2 hours later because she was complaining of bluescreens when gaming i look on the side of her desk and see THE FAN that needed to be on her gtx 770

LoL This one is really something..

 

[DaSXTC]

Wow. Pulling the RAM out while it's running? Yikes.
Good rule of thumb: TURN EVERYTHING OFF.

I guess I'm a wonder boy then... about 8 years ago when I knew virtually nothing about pc's.. I pulled one stick of ram out to replace it with 3 new ones while my pc was on without problems. Maybe he didn't pull them out "carefully" or maybe he touched the board while he was static?

 

[Epicness937]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

my sister removed her gpu fan because it took up too much space......
lucky i was there and fixed it 2 1/2 hours later because she was complaining of bluescreens when gaming i look on the side of her desk and see THE FAN that needed to be on her gtx 770

LoL This one is really something..

im a pc builder and programer my dad is a electrical engineer my grandpa is a programer my sister is......

 

[Sami 1999]

Buying 980Ti was the worst mistake I ever made. Had to wait two years to buy it. And now 290x nearly matches this card while being extremely cheap. Dx12 fucked in 980Ti. So I just bought a 600 $ (it was actually 825 $ in my country) only to waste my money.

 

[Saucome Awece]

Well, when I was a youngin', I was into not paying for anything. So I got into my ghetto-rig ways of splicing cables, power supplies together, or adding adapters my PSU didn't have. I was also into not caring if me shit was protected or not. So, when I was all done hooking up my cables or whatever it was, it was time to break out the scotch tape! yup! scotch tape! So, when gaming one fateful day (CS:GO), for some odd reason, MY COMPUTER WAS ON FIRE! So yeah that computer's dead... glad it sucked cause I was a cheapass!
!

EDIT: I'm also glad I still have a house, despite me being a cheapass!

 

[turkey3_scratch]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

my sister removed her gpu fan because it took up too much space......
lucky i was there and fixed it 2 1/2 hours later because she was complaining of bluescreens when gaming i look on the side of her desk and see THE FAN that needed to be on her gtx 770

LoL This one is really something..

im a pc builder and programer my dad is a electrical engineer my grandpa is a programer my sister is......

Lol to what your sister did. Epic fail there!

 

[Epicness937]

When I tried to install my first GPU, I actually got it in correctly without breaking it, but i forgot to screw it in. I had to tug on the DVI input a little, to get it in, and it got very loosely seated. The GPU performed horribly, and I kept getting the display driver crashed and recovered a million times, until i RMA'd. Surprisingly, they gave me a refund. It took a good 3 weeks to get the refund, though.

I also bought the PC from superbiiz, and chose to get assembly service, since it's only $35, and I have no clue how to assemble a PC. The PC arrived, and I plugged the DVI into the MOTHERBOARD, and the graphics card. It took a good 2 hours to figure out that I plugged it in the wrong place -_-

Haha that happened to my first GPU 😉

NOTE: always place the GPU in fully and not wobbly

my sister removed her gpu fan because it took up too much space......
lucky i was there and fixed it 2 1/2 hours later because she was complaining of bluescreens when gaming i look on the side of her desk and see THE FAN that needed to be on her gtx 770

LoL This one is really something..

im a pc builder and programer my dad is a electrical engineer my grandpa is a programer my sister is......

Lol to what your sister did. Epic fail there!

well i saved the card

 

[englishmaninohio]

I just had a good moment. I made the mistake of using a small case and a non-modular psu (how does this relate to graphics cards?). I just turned on my PC and the GPU fans instantly rocketed to 100%. It was strange that the fans even turned on at all since I have one of these new fangled 'silent cooling' cards that don't spin up until there is a load. I instantly hopped into Afterburner and set the fans as low as they could go - nothing happened. I then went in to GPU Z which said the fan speed was 0 RPM - obviously not true.

I was then thinking the worst. My $180 graphics card is a zombie. Until I opened my case:

There was a SATA power cable from my PSU Jammed in the rear fan of the card. SInce the case has very little in the way of cable management I had jammed it and all the other unused cables at the back behing the GPU and it had come back to haunt me. Luckily there was no lasting damage, and now everything is ziptied to the wall of the case.


Tl;dr: My piss poor cable management led to a GTX 960 ingesting a SATA power cable.

 

[Epicness937]

I just had a good moment. I made the mistake of using a small case and a non-modular psu (how does this relate to graphics cards?). I just turned on my PC and the GPU fans instantly rocketed to 100%. It was strange that the fans even turned on at all since I have one of these new fangled 'silent cooling' cards that don't spin up until there is a load. I instantly hopped into Afterburner and set the fans as low as they could go - nothing happened. I then went in to GPU Z which said the fan speed was 0 RPM - obviously not true.

I was then thinking the worst. My $180 graphics card is a zombie. Until I opened my case:

There was a SATA power cable from my PSU Jammed in the rear fan of the card. SInce the case has very little in the way of cable management I had jammed it and all the other unused cables at the back behing the GPU and it had come back to haunt me. Luckily there was no lasting damage, and now everything is ziptied to the wall of the case.


Tl;dr: My piss poor cable management led to a GTX 960 ingesting a SATA power cable.

one idea DONT remove the fan
been there done that

 

[David093]

I bought an r7 240 thinking it would be nice for gaming. Stupidest waste of money of my life. After a few months I bought an r7 260x that is still sitting on my rig to this day, and that 240 is sitting on it's ass in a wardrobe LOL

 

[Forte777]

I took two sleeping pills one night and stayed at my computer for a while.
At some point I fell asleep and when I woke up tomorrow and wanted to play Far Cry 4 I was having 30-40 fps. I instantly started having flashbacks. These pills basically get me in a high, kinda not sure if I'm awake or dead or dreaming kinda state. So anyways I immediately close the game and see the Unigine Heaven icon on my desktop which triggers more flashbacks. Oh no. I was actually testing the limits of my OC of my GTX 970 last night. Basically I guess I was having fun determining what the highest clocks would be and at one point when the pills really kicked in I got kinda lost in that state of mind where I couldn't tell reality from a dream. So I set everything at max:

Voltage: +87
Power: 110%
Core Clock: +1000 (2329)
Memory Clock: +1000 (4505)

I remember the driver crashing too. Anyways I checked what the GPU was doing while I was playing and the utilization was about 50%
I thought I had fried my beloved MSI GTX 970. After trying out everything I just reinstalled the driver and everything was back to normal. So that was my biggest graphics card mistake, BUT I do remember finding my max stable OC at about a little under +220 on the Core Clock and about +500 on the memory with a +5 voltage increase, without crashing or artifacting. SO THERE YOU HAVE IT.

TL;DR OC'd my GPU to the ABSOLUTE MAX in every setting, crashed and had issues.
After reinstalling the driver everything went back to normal and I learnt my max OC.

 

[Jhayr_1433]

Mine was pretty Dumb Mistake (face palm while smiling)

I bought a new graphics card, turn off my computer took of the side panel install the GPU and while im putting everything back i just realized i dont have DVI or Display port cable .... T.T

 

[dexxterlab97]

Bought a cheap pre built cause why not. It was 450usd with gtx 760 and i5 4460. Well it has 3gb vram so it must be better. Friend suggested for a gtx 760 2gb cheaper. NOOO.. turns out my card was gtx 760 3gb oem 192bit which is slower than 760 2gb. FML

 

[iam2thecrowe]

Well once i had a suspect faulty PSU. My pc wouldn't always turn on properly and i thought it would be a good idea to test the psu in another computer, rather than getting another psu to test in my own. I plugged my PSU into my dads computer, obviously the load was a bit different on his pc, and it certainly confirmed that my psu was faulty with a puff of smoke. I was now up for a new psu, and a new motherboard and video card for my dad as the faulty psu killed them as it exploded. 2 lessons learned:

1. Don't buy cheap power supplies, if it's too good to be true then it probably is, and it will cost you more in the long run.

2. Don't put suspected faulty parts in others PC's.

 

[nitrium]

I don't recall any physical abuse I have done to a GPU, but I have certainly made some GPU purchasing mistakes:

1. Powercolor 8800GTS 320MB. That thing was a total pos in every way (too little VRAM, ran super hot, crashed all the time), and I think the only GPU I didn't own for at least 2 years before getting rid of it (I actually felt bad for the guy that bought it off me).

2. Gigabyte GTX 260 OC 768MB. Had to get the hardware fixed (Gigabyte did a free recall on these, but sent back refurbished cards) because it gave a blackscreen during polling (a well-known issue due to very bad design). It also doesn't clock down whatsoever when idle, i.e. it runs at full clock ALL THE TIME (another Gigabyte GTX260 fail that was never fixed). Still kept this one for 3 years I think it was - finally replaced with a Sapphire HD7950 (see next).

3. Sapphire HD7950 3GB OC Vapor-X Edition. Bad firmware (due to Sapphire using two different types of RAM that required different voltages, but they used the same firmware) meant the GPU continually downclocked to 500MHz due to AMD's PowerTune technology. Fortunately was 100% fixed by a firmware update (Sapphire's customer support is very good at least - but the GPU certainly wasn't great design-wise in any case).
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-curb-excessive-vrm-temps-under-full-gpu-load-on-sapphire-vapor-x-7950s.186666/

 

[dalemcgowan]

VIDEO CARD - msi radeon r9 390
CASE - Corsair 200r atx mid tower case
Power supply - corsair cx 600w80+ bronze certified semi-modular atx
HARD DRIVE - 1tb western digital
OPERATING SYSYEM - windows 10 pro 64bit

I have tried everything I have read lots of forums of people having the same problem apparently its the graphics card drivers, so I tried unistalling everything with ddu also redownloaded a fresh copy of windows 10 64bit reinstalled same problem, I can watch youtube videos at 1080p 60fps but as soon as I load a game e.g hearthstone, runescape I crash, the longest I have played was an hour, ive tried older graphics drivers still no luck tried writing to amd no luck. if anyone could help or have any suggestions it would be great.

procedures I have ttried and tested:
-fresh install of windows.
-fresh install of drivers.
-msi after burner uping the fan speed and power output
-ddu to uninstall all drivers

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

My baby daughter was always fascinated when I took my PC apart for cleaning, so one day I took my GPU out, held it in front of her and BLARGH! She puked all over it!

On the plus side, I got a nice, shiny GTX 770 shortly after. 😀

 

[Ambular]

My baby daughter was always fascinated when I took my PC apart for cleaning, so one day I took my GPU out, held it in front of her and BLARGH! She puked all over it!

On the plus side, I got a nice, shiny GTX 770 shortly after. 😀

Clearly the poor girl was so excited she just couldn't contain herself! A future enthusiast in the making for sure. XD

 

[Epicness937]

My baby daughter was always fascinated when I took my PC apart for cleaning, so one day I took my GPU out, held it in front of her and BLARGH! She puked all over it!

On the plus side, I got a nice, shiny GTX 770 shortly after. 😀

did she keep the fan on ?? 😀
(read my post above )

 

[iyzik]

Buying a HD 6970 with reference cooling...With the stock fan profile it will hit thermal limit in most games and shut down. With the fan on custom it sounds like I have several cattle fans inside of my computer and still runs about 85C.

 

[esrever]

I tried to cook my dead gpu in the oven to try to revive it. I forgot to take the fan off when I did it. 10 mins later, I smell burnt plastic..

Had to clean out my oven and dispose of deformed card. I half wanted to try it out to see if it would work but since the fan couldn't even spin any more, I decided against it.

 

[Epicness937]

I tried to cook my dead gpu in the oven to try to revive it. I forgot to take the fan off when I did it. 10 mins later, I smell burnt plastic..

Had to clean out my oven and dispose of deformed card. I half wanted to try it out to see if it would work but since the fan couldn't even spin any more, I decided against it.

unless its a overclocked 290x no other gpu can live though that