Recently purchased a 980 TI for under $100 told that it does not work. I removed the heat sink, thermal pads and all the paste and gave it a good cleaning. Checked for shorts and could not visually see anything wrong with the card. Took a multi meter to the card in various areas and was able to retrieve signal in the only places I knew where to look. The only desktop PC I own is a dell Optiplex 9010 which will only accept a GPU shorter than 8” before it covers all the SATA ports. The 980 ti MSI golden edition is about 10” and can not be mounted into the PCI slot without destroying the HDD bays. I have an expansion cable that I used to test the card, but this means the card is free floating . When I boot the PC, the monitor detects a signal, but stays black. I was curious if the card not being mounted (maybe not grounded properly) could cause this? It’s something I was always curious about.