I recently put together a new pc after following helpful guidence on these forums and everything was fine for 3 weeks or so. Being a new pc, it needed some serious game playing to check everything was ok. The gfx card I chose was an MSI GTX 570, pretty beefy card, was looking forward to seeing what it could do. When not at work or sleeping, I was playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 or Eve online constantly. Everything fine, no issues at all. I played well over 30 hours of battlefield in these 3 weeks, nevermind doing other bits and other games, watching films etc.

Fast forward 3 weeks later, come home from work, start up battlefield, connect to a server, withing seconds, major artifacts all over the map, textures coloured in magenta rather than the correct colours. Within 20 - 30 seconds, battlefield locks up, have to CTRL Alt Del to desktop to kill it. Very strange. Check the temp of the card, ~ 50deg C, CPU (I5 2500k) around 38deg, so nothing crazy. Everything is housed in a P193 with fans on max, so loads of cooling. Try again, same issue. Restart the machine, try again, same issue with Battlefield. Decided to try Eve, artifacts all over the login screen. Try CS:S, artifacts the moment I connect to a server followed by crash.

Decide to quit to desktop and decide what to do next. Within a few minutes, there is artifacts on the Win 7 desktop. Sections of the standard win 7 wallpaper were flickering, title bars on windows are flickering, the start button is flickering from being huge back to normal, all sorts of crazy stuff. Every so often the screen will freeze and the graphics driver will crash and restart. This is exactly the same driver from fresh windows install that has played games for hours on end with no issues since built. I decided to give up for the night and wait until the next day to decide what to do.

Pretty much same deal again, come home from work, decide to give battlefield a go, soon as I'm on a server, artifacts followed by lock up and crash. Decide to send an RMA. Get supplied with a number, package it up, send it off. Had an old low end Nvidia 8000 series card kicking around I've stuck in the PC so I can at least use windows in the mean time, even if I can't play games, and this has been stable with the old card in.

Get the test results today saying everything was fine, and I have to pay the handling fee + return costs + VAT. Ok, I agreed to those terms, but there is no way this card is working. I was already the best part of £10 down having to return it at my own expense (nevermind petrol and time out of my working day to go to the post office, but I'll ignore that), so now I'm looking at around another £30 in fees to get a £260 card back which is useless for my primary use, at which point I'll have to find another £260 from somewhere to buy a new one.

I'm not sure what to do right now, I'm pretty gutted that in less than a month from build my brand new gaming pc is out of action, nevermind the fact I'm going to be £300 worse off (once I've paid all the fees to get the card back), and then still have to buy a replacement card leaving me almost £600 down. I've built enough PCs over the last 12 or so years (as well as working in a PC repair shop during that time) to know that artifacts and problems in windows are a graphics card issue, and the fact a different card has been fine while I'll been without my card would back this up.

I'm really unsure what to do now. Can anyone offer a gutted gamer some advice on where to turn now?

Edit 1 (12th Sept 11): This thread is getting a bit long, will provide some summaries:

- Had problems with a 3 week old GTX 570
- Submitted RMA
- Card was tested and found not faulty
- In the mean time, had been using an old geforce 8400gt without any issues (ignoring the fact it's old and slow)
- I asked for it to be retested
- Chased it up a week later, same deal, paid the various fees to get it back
- Got it back, briefly tested the card, seems ok.
- The weekend comes along, sit down for some gaming time, the issues return.
- "Pics or it didn't happen" I hear you say... here you go: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=20039595&postcount=132
- Posted in the OCUK issues section of the forums as advised, response this morning (12th sept) was along the lines of "Those pics do indicate an issue, have you tried another card?". Responded this morning confirming another card was fine, just fine.
- Awaiting response.

Edit 2 (13th Sept 11):

Been 24hrs since the last response from OCUK. Still waiting.

Edit 3 (13th Sept 11):

Chased them up asking for a response. Been offered another retest. Decided enough is enough, have asked for a refund.

Edit 4 (22nd Sept 11)

Returned my card last Thursday (15th Sept), card was delivered and confirmed received on the next day on the 16th. I've asked a couple of times for updates and almost a week on, still no refund. Have bought a new card (so I'm currently another £200 down) and that works flawlessly (as expected).

Bottom line, OCUK have really poor customer service. They've had multiple opportunities to let me know what's going on, but have instead left it to me to chase them. Very poor...

What is the spec of the rest of your system?

Who did you RMA it to?

OCUK or MSI?

If you RMA'd it to OCUK I'd try raising a query with MSI and see if you can RMA it through them...

If they inform you that the card is indeed faulty then I'd get onto OCUK's customer support and point out their error in testing...

Also do you have another rig/friends rig you could test the 570 in for now?

kd

This was the original thread: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18297081

With a couple of changes due to stuff being out of stock at the time of ordering, so the final spec was this:

King Damager said:

Who did you RMA it to?

OCUK or MSI?

If you RMA'd it to OCUK I'd try raising a query with MSI and see if you can RMA it through them...

If they inform you that the card is indeed faulty then I'd get onto OCUK's customer support and point out their error in testing...

Also do you have another rig/friends rig you could test the 570 in for now?

kd

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Went through OCUK. The card is still with them atm and I got the email today saying I have to pay the various fees in order to get it back, and I don't want to rush into paying more money to get the card back and be in the same boat just with a lighter wallet. Once I've got the card back, I'll be able to test it in a friends machine, but at the time, my thought process was a card that's been working fine for 3 weeks and suddenly throws up artifacts is an open and shut case of gfx card failure (having seen this problem many times over the years).

I had a similar issue with an X800 (i think) many years ago. I ended up returning the card to OcUK several times before they reproduced the fault. It was a right pain and it took an age to resolve refunds etc.

When you get the card back test it thoroughly to see whether it works. If you still have issues test it within another system (if posiible). If all is okay you will just have to lump it. I have also had random component issues it the past that disappeared after a complete rebuild.

You have to test it in another PC to be sure its nothing to do with your own rig.

WOW....

If I was in your shoes I'd be going mental about now. You have a faulty part under warrantry, you went to your own expense to send it back for RMA (I would have thought the retailer should pick up the cost of that - pretty sure others do) - and you just get sent a bill?

OCUK need to respond, this sort of stuff will lose you business.

Bummer. Must say my MSI GTX 570 is doing sterling service with everything I can throw at it.

No help there I guess but good luck getting it sorted anyways.

To be fair to OCUK, from reading the op's post it would appear that he did no fault finding of his own apart from checking temps and trying a couple of games. Personally i would'nt have sent a card back without doing much more than that including a fresh install.

billysielu said:

WOW....

If I was in your shoes I'd be going mental about now. You have a faulty part under warrantry, you went to your own expense to send it back for RMA (I would have thought the retailer should pick up the cost of that - pretty sure others do) - and you just get sent a bill?

OCUK need to respond, this sort of stuff will lose you business.

Click to expand...

On the other side of the fence, they have received a card thought to be faulty and found zero fault with it. They have tested it and found nothing wrong at all.

Nothing else causes artefacts in games - there's no fault-finding to be done?

To the OP: you'll have to test the card in another rig and clearly state how to reproduce the problems to OcUK, otherwise they earn easy cash of £20 each time, and you waste £10 for shipping.

I used to have problem with a motherboard and OcUK wasn't able to reproduce the problem because it's an intermittent problem. I ended up selling the motherboard for cheap.

Thanks for the advice guys.

I'm unsure what other fault finding you can do when a card is showing constant artifacts and driver crashes on 3 week old installation if windows, that's black and white a card with seirous problems. I've done my bit by writing a detailed description of the problem in the RMA request and jumped through the numerous hoops that is called the OCUK web ticket system (as a web dev, I'd be embarassed handing that to a client).

Don't think there I've got much in the way of options, just a really fustrating and vastly more expensive return process compared to other online retailers, something I'll keep in mind for future purchases. Live and learn.

Having read this thread from the start , and having dispensed with the obvious fanboism, personally, I too'd be a bit iffy about buying anything from Overclockers again

Boge said:

Having read this thread from the start , and having dispensed with the obvious fanboism, personally, I too'd be a bit iffy about buying anything from Overclockers again

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Well if you google the comments and reviews regarding ocuk, you could see that most people would agree that ocuk is great, until the day you find something goes faulty I'm now very cautious when returning items to ocuk - if I buy a new item I'd stress test it as soon as I receive it and if I find anything unusual I'd return under DSR to save all the trouble.

Actually other retailers also have their own problems. I used to have problems while trying to return items to a competitor. Now before I spend much money to buy something as a new customer on a website, I always ask for a confirmation of their terms under DSR to archive for lawsuit purposes.

You have a few options. When you get the card back firstly test it in another system just to be sure. If it is still faulty make some videos and send them to OcUK showing the artifacts. If that doesn't convince them the card is faulty then you could, and should, RMA direct with MSI. If MSI find the card faulty and they replace it then send OcUK a copy of any emails/replacement invoice to show them that it was actually faulty and they should refund the test fee.

And if all that fails then take a look at the Sales of goods act. Specifically the part about an item bought withing 6 months

You shouldn't have to buy another card.

If it becomes apparent that an item is not of the quality you were led to expect, you were not aware of any such defect when you bought it, and you bought from a seller acting ‘in the course of a business’ (i.e. not an informal sale), you are quite within your rights to go back to the retailer, even after some months of use. If a product develops a fault within the first 6 months, the assumption will be that this defect was present at the time of purchase and you will not have to prove anything.

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Sauce http://whatconsumer.co.uk/how-do-you-measure-quality/

This story brings back (bad) memories of changing from a HD4850 to a GTX460 last November.

My card worked in 3 other PCs, but not mine. The only component I didn't change in my PC was the motherboard, so I assumed the motherboard was at fault. In the end I found out I was wrong, it was the graphics card. The replacement graphics card works in my motherboard, but didn't work in an another board that I bought as a temporary replacement when my main board was away being tested.

In other words, it was a complete nightmare, and luckily Gigabyte didn't charge me when they initially tested my motherboard. Needless to say, my next graphics card will not be Nvidia.

BTW. Even though the GTX460 was bought from OCUK, I dealt directly with Gigabyte, and luckily for me both the MB and the GFX card were Gigabyte products, so at least i didn't get two manufacturers blaming each other.

Similar story with a GTX 480 I returned here. OCUK said its fine, it clearly is not, charged me for a return/test (ha!)

Lesson learned for me, do not rma stuff to OCUK unless you have to. Or shop elsewhere