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Dead MSI GTX 570 RMA'd and reported working, not sure what to do next

This is not the first time a faulty gfx card has been sent back and no faults were found. A few people had the same issue with the 480 SOC cards. OcUK didn't find faults but when the cards were RMA'ed direct to Gigabyte they were replaced. Artifacts= faulty/unstable card.
 
Yeah i would definitely not accept that, i usually hear nothing but positive remarks about OcUk but that is unacceptable.

I wouldn't be paying to get the product back thats for sure.
 
Hearing from one side of the story equals biased responses - I'd seriously halt all OcUK bashing before you know the whole story.

Last time I had a problem with a GFX card it was VRAM and OcUK even talked me through what they were testing over the phone!
 
Ovr said:
Hearing from one side of the story equals biased responses - I'd seriously halt all OcUK bashing before you know the whole story.

Last time I had a problem with a GFX card it was VRAM and OcUK even talked me through what they were testing over the phone!
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Agreed, be curious to hear OCUK's side. Actually surprised they haven't posted here yet.
 
I actually remember a galaxy glacier 6800gt, nasty card as the cooler was put on badly and bent the board. I think it was a known thing these cards were bad. I sent it back 3 times and eventually it did show the overheating issue, got an x800xt pe instead. I do agree we need to hear the other side before judgement but i do understand being on the wrong side of the rma fence
 
I`ve told this story here and elsewhere in the past, but it might be of interest.......

Bought a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB OC from OCUK last November.

System :

Gigabyte MA790X-UD3P
AMD X2 5000+
OCZ Platinum DDR2 2Gb x 2
Coolermaster SilentPro 700w Modular PSU
Intel X-25M SSD
WD 640GB HDD
Windows 7 64bit
ATI HD4850 512mb

All working perfectly before changing the graphics card.

Removed ATI Drivers and Card. Install GTX460 + Latest Drivers.

Tested card, seemed OK until put under load in games or benchmarks. Within a minute or two the screen would freeze, often game music would continue. Normal desktop use was fine, but even running a youtube clip would sometimes cause a lockup. Booted into XP on a spare hard drive, installed drivers, same problem. Swapped back to HD4850, no more lockups. Back to GTX460, still problems. Tried various drivers, including Gigabyte's own, no luck.

Faulty GTX460 ? OK, took it to 2 x friend's houses for testing in PCs that I had built. Friend 1 had a cheap 500w PSU, so i was a bit dubious. However, testing with Heaven/Kombustor for 30 minutes pretty much proved that the GTX460 was fine. Tested in friend 2's PC, again worked perfectly under load for at least 15 minutes. Took card back home, locks up within a few minutes of testing.

Went back to friend 2 to borrow PSU + RAM. In the meantime I had ordered a couple of AMD 550 BE 3.1Ghz for upgrades. Swapped my CPU, RAM and PSU - still freezing under load. Clean install of Win 7 - still locking up.

So, GTX460 works perfectly in 2 other machines, but won't behave in my PC, despite trying another PSU, CPU and RAM. Conclusion - motherboard faulty. Supplier of MB (not ocuk) state that they will charge me if no fault found, and that they couldn't promise to test it with an identical graphics card. I wasn't happy with that, so contacted Gigabyte. They tested my motherboard for about a week with various GTX4** cards and had no problem. In the meantime I bought a cheap Gigabyte motherboard as a temporary replacement. Interestingly the GTX460 worked flawlessly in that board. Eventually my MB was returned from Gigabyte, thankfully with no charge (I suspect they knew there was something odd going on). Optimistically, I thought that the MB might now work OK with the GTX460. No it didn't. So, my GFX card has been tested OK with 3 different motherboards, 3 different PSUs and various OS's, CPUs and sets of RAM. Only option is to send Gigabyte my motherboard and gfx card for testing together (I wonder how I would have got on if my motherboard wasn't Gigabyte ?). A few days after Gigabyte got my MB + GFX card, they replicated the fault and sent my MB and a replacement GTX460 back to me.

On receipt of the replacement GFX card, I decided to test it in the temporary motherboard (the cheap Gigabyte one) that I had been using for the past week with on old Nvidia 7300GS. The replacement GTX460 didn't produce any output when installed on the MB, even though the original GTX460 worked perfectly. They couldn't have sent me a dead card, could they ? I rebuilt my system with my original motherboard and the GTX460 worked perfectly, as it has done up until today. That's the good news, but as you can see I spent many hours trying to isolate the fault. Not only that, in the back of my mind I still know that there is something not quite right with the replacement card.

Guess what make my next GPU will be ?
 
OK so Musicboffin when this problem first manifested itself what did you do, as is it just a case of artifacts on screen, try a few different programs, still artifacts on screen, try again tomorrow, still artifacts on screen, take card out package up for RMA.

Or did you try re-seating the card, check all the power connections, different driver install, system restore to an earlier time, fresh install of windows even if only on a temp partition, test another card in your machine, test the suspect card in another machine, or anything else you can think of.
Didn't the guys at OCUK suggest you test it throughly before sending it back for RMA.
I would certainly do all these things myself before spending any money on sending it back.
 
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bru said:
Or did you try re-seating the card, check all the power connections, different driver install, system restore to an earlier time, fresh install of windows even if only on a temp partition, test another card in your machine, test the suspect card in another machine, or anything else you can think of.
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None of these things make any difference. Pink artefacts are caused by a faulty graphics card (vram specifically). You can do another thousand tests if you like, but it would be a complete waste of time.
 
kitch9 said:
Can have have your magic list of issue X causes problem Y for PC's please?

I've never come across one yet, but you appear to have it.
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It's a good point, this probably should be documented somewhere. I don't know any more than I've already said though - I just happen to know that drivers crash if it's power, and pink artefacts mean faulty vram. This is just from personal experience and helping others with their issues. Once you debug a bunch using the steps you'd probably take, you start to notice patterns.
 
billysielu said:
None of these things make any difference. Pink artefacts are caused by a faulty graphics card (vram specifically). You can do another thousand tests if you like, but it would be a complete waste of time.
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so its OK for people to moan at OCUK for testing the card and finding it not faulty whereas when i suggest testing the card to make sure its not something else causing it, its a complete waste of time.

yeah OK.

also Ive had cards before that have artifacted all over the place, very often re-seating them will solve these issues.
 
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This just proves how difficult it can be reproduce an obvious hardware faulty sometimes. Time and money wasted at the customers expense due to a faulty product. Surely there's a better solution?
 
In regard to the postage, I sent my MSI motherboard back through Overclockers only last week, and they refunded me the postage because I asked them to. Just had to send them a picture of the receipt.

Unfortunately the motherboard came back damaged, so that needs sorting, but hey...
 
Musicboffin said:
Also, there is a certain element of customer service here. You've got a customer who is already a bit unhappy something that's new has packed up so soon, regardless of the cause. You then annoy them further with a poorly designed RMA system, with short emails along the lines of:

- "You can return it, but we will charge you x, y and z if there is no fault (no return details given, or reference number, or reply email address)"

Followed by:

- "Test, no fault, you must pay the fee (no price given), call this number."

Followed by chasing emails saying:

- "You still haven't paid this fee (no price given)"

Suddenly someone who already not too happy is even less happy due to the lack of customer service here, as well as being chased for money when they have been busy at work or decided that calling OCUK isn't their top priority today. Firstly, there could be a proper online system for RMAs rather than sending unrelated email after email. Secondly, the first contact after the item hasn't been found faulty would be something like "Please call us to discuss this and provide more details to help us get to the bottom of this", not "You've already given us a grand, now give us more money".

On top of that, I'm now thinking "these guys aren't too friendly, they just want my money, I'll go elsewhere for the next pc I build, screw them" so for the sake of £30 or so, they've now lost out of my next £1k purchase. What if I now tell my friends about my bad experience and they take all of their next £1k purchases elsewhere? Suddenly that £30 and emails that could have been more polite and helpful have cost them £5-6k. What if those people tell their friends? That's how companies go bust.

None of that helps my situation, but maybe all the people saying a returns dept need to break peoples balls will realise the knock on effect it has.
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OCUK's RMA department is like many other e-tailers, annoying, and you have to jump through countless hoops and in the end you just want to shout at them.
Just remember the LAW is on your side, they have your money and you can get a refund and go elsewhere.
 
Just on the off chance did you try reseat the card before sending back, my old rig with a 5870 was fine for 6 months then started to freeze and artefact lots.. Finally after a fresh copy of windows and trying different ram I was at a loss then I removed the card blew the slot out and put it back in problem was fixed and still working now 16 months later lol
 
~TB~ said:
In my experience the law, consumers rights and "customer sevices" are simply not in OCUK's vocabulary.

Good luck to the OP in getting this resolved, unfortunately your going to need it .....
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Doesnt matter if its not in ocuk's vocabulary, its the law and he can take it to the small claims court where the law will be 100% on his side, i know as i have had to do this once with a company that refused to refund me for an item that didnt work as stated and i got my money back with no cost to myself.
 
Yes, I know, and it was only a threat of CAB and Trading Standards that actually got them to do anything, despite them admitting they were in the wrong. From experience their stance is deny, fob off, lie and don't actually do anything unless they are threatened with such action.

Im sure there are plenty of people whom have had good experiences with them, but mine (once they have taken your money) were, for the majority, bad.
 
~TB~ said:
Im sure there are plenty of people whom have had good experiences with them, but mine (once they have taken your money) were, for the majority, bad.
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Thankfully all mine have been good with OCUK so far, but i did RMA a mobo a few days ago as the lan port was DOA, but from what the mobo manufacturer told me the only choice is to replace it.
 
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