Crucial 9700pro Problems

[LoneWolfX1X]

Well when I first got it the other day it booted up the first time and the screen was all scrambled.

a couple reseats later and it booted up fine. No sweat I thought maybe just a loose connection.

But every time I reboot I get either a garbled screen, a vga failure via port 80, or a good boot.

Thinking it was a heat issue I removed the hsf and checked contact...the TIM was barely bubbled after some heavy benchmarking so I knew contact wasnt good. I removed the tim and applied some as3...pressed for contact and got none. The little broonze shim around the core package was a bit too high. So i tried dremeling down the hsf to clear the shim but it wasnt a perfect job and only got half core coverage. A little dremel tweaking later and I got a good core imprint.

Now it still garbles on boot occasionally and I'm thinking I got a bad card.

Now I try to be honest in all things so if I do try to RMA the card I'll tell crucial exactly what i tried...but did I screw myself out of 300 bucks just by modding the hsf?

or is there perhaps another cause I'm not thinking of (note my ti4600 worked great before and after trying the 9700)

[nexus_7]

I poped off the shim thingy! but if I were U I would stop dicking around with it and send it back to them and get anotherone.

Greg