EVGA is my go-to for graphics. They’re hands down the best manufacturer AND support company out there. Their RMA process is smooth as silk.
EVGA is my go-to for graphics. They’re hands down the best manufacturer AND support company out there. Their RMA process is smooth as silk.The card I replaced was an EVGA, and that was the first brand I looked at when shopping for replacements. However, for this particular chip (GeForce 970), the eVGA card is known to have a poor thermal design. Also, the reason I was replacing the previous eVGA card was that one of the fans had gone out.
So I decided to look at alternatives to eVGA. The major brands were eVGA (already eliminated), MSI, Gigabyte, and ASUS. I read that these cards are quite heavy, and so it was a good idea to get one with a back-plate. That narrowed it down to two cards - the ASUS and the MSI. The MSI was significantly longer, and having run into space problems with video cards before, I decided to go with the ASUS. Good thing I did too, as the ASUS just barely fit.
Oldest son's gaming PC just got an EVGA GTX 970 video upgrade and he LOVES it. Fastest Gaming PC at college he says.
I have EVGA GTX 960's in three pc's here. Rock solid cards. Never get too warm (though I don't do a lot of gaming myself) and their driver support is really good.
While I'm at it, I always use Corsair Memory (never fails!) and Corsair RM Series modular power supplies (750w minimum) in all my PC's.
The last hardware failure I had was about 6 months ago, and that was on a small form factor PC I'd built back in @ 2004/2005. I'd neglected to pull it apart and check the thermal paste on the CPU for a few years. After the PC failed I pulled it apart to see if the thermal paste dried up and caused the CPU to overheat. Yep, that's what happened. Thermal paste (Arctic Silver) had turned to dust after running for years and years without failure.
No great loss. Replaced it with an i7 SFF PC with a water cooler. Fastest machine in the house right now. These new i7 Skylakes are just incredible.