So I buy a gtx 680 4gb from a friend of mine to replace my 2 7850s. Things are running fine through benchmarking and games. I put a universal water block on it as well as heatsinks on the VRAM and VRMs, and head to a friend's place for a weekend lan. Suddenly I start noticing artifacts and random red lines flickering across my screen. I like to look on the bright side of things, but all I can think of is that damaged the card somehow. My friend lends me a different hdmi cable just in case. Now I don't get any image on my monitor at all. Panic is really setting in now. I borrow another hdmi cable and it works. It turns out that my original hdmi cable was just damaged somehow and the second was completely nonfunctional.
*sigh of relief*
*sigh of relief*