Ugly GPUs

Back to graphics cards. I realize this is not what we are looking for here but thought many would find the ugliness inside this Sapphire HD 3850 amusing.
Good thing it was cheap. Put a smiley sticker on underside of fan for the next person.



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You think that's bad. Soltek made a few purple versions like golden flame above at very end of production run. I still want one. :D

An ugly mobo thread is not a bad idea.

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I see your purple Soltek and raise you the MSI P7N Diamond 780i wtf edition … what’s with that slot/connector color theme? And the ferris wheel nb cooler?
 
Can we at least appreciate that once upon a time, different board manufacturers actually had any kind of eye at all for aesthetics? 'Cuz they sure don't now :)
 
Can we at least appreciate that manufacturers used to put heatsinks/pipes on their boards that were actually functional? Not just garbage shrouds that barely do anything
I would be worried about cpu cooler clearance on this one, but yes. Anyways.. I have derailed this thread enough lol.

Was never a fan of the look of this version of the 6800LE...

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I would be worried about cpu cooler clearance on this one, but yes. Anyways.. I have derailed this thread enough lol.

Was never a fan of the look of this version of the 6800LE...

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I don't remember if the cooler on that thing worked good or not. It's FUGLY, but that's a lot of decent looking copper on there, and if that fan isn't loud I bet it worked pretty good.
 
I don't remember if the cooler on that thing worked good or not. It's FUGLY, but that's a lot of decent looking copper on there, and if that fan isn't loud I bet it worked pretty good.
aside from blowing heat into the case, assuming good contact to the gpu die, I bet it worked fine. I mean it's a pretty simple design with no pipes... I remember my 6800Ultras blew some really hot air.. I mean very impressive levels.. also into the case lol. not sure about the LE.. I think it was like crippled 6800 softmodded to run faster.. probably got warm. :)
 
You know, once you get over the first shock, this would have been good in a theme build.
Agreed. Member on another forum was doing exactly that with gold flame board. Gold Chaintech or Gainward card like above and gold colored Kingmax DDR modules.
 
I would be worried about cpu cooler clearance on this one, but yes. Anyways.. I have derailed this thread enough lol.

Was never a fan of the look of this version of the 6800LE...

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Have same one but in NU / vanilla flavor. After reworking the copper plates for better contact & cooling, overclocking, and opening pipelines to 16 it ran just above the GT version. For much less money.

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You know, once you get over the first shock, this would have been good in a theme build.
I actually love the look of the Golden Flame... yeah a theme build would be good.. with the Golden Dragon ram and a Chaintech Geforce3 ti200...
 
You think that's bad. Soltek made a few purple versions like golden flame above at very end of production run. I still want one. :D

An ugly mobo thread is not a bad idea.

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That is sexy. I would love to have a motherboard with a purple PCB. I could do without the yellow connector slots, though. I know it's a complimentary color, but still.
 
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I see your purple Soltek and raise you the MSI P7N Diamond 780i wtf edition … what’s with that slot/connector color theme? And the ferris wheel nb cooler?
oh god I had one of those, a friend gave it to me in 2012 'cause the CPU died and he didn't want to deal with it. On paper it had stunning specs, but it was actually complete garbage, chipset ran super hot even with all the heatpipes, VRMs had "issues" that probably had killed my friends CPU, and eventually it just stopped working completely for no apparent reason. And heck, that color scheme... I think MSI's intention was to denote things like which PCIe slots were connected to which controllers (this is one of those weird dual-chipset boards) and which DIMM slots are on which channel, but it ends up conveying too much information in too obscure a way such that the user had to check the manual anyways. Or maybe MSI was just being unhinged to be unhinged, it was the late 00's lol
 
I was going to post a picture of the new platinum and titanium encased 3090 Ti with diamond accents and multi-laser RGB, since those options only marginally increases the cost.
 
Everything during the frog/mermaid/robot/ruby/merman mascot era of GPUs was ugly - it made everything look cheap - change mind mind- you can't ✋
 
now we can see it in "action"...



Man, I had never heard of this. At first I presumed it was just a GPU and wireless NIC on the same card, but boy was I wrong.

Wireless streaming to a remote big screen. Not my cup of tea, but but Galaxy were certainly ahead of their time on the "big screen living room gaming" from the PC thing which has become pretty popular in the last 5 years or so.
 

Wow, i forgot about these...i actually had the A350 version of this (FX5900 Ultra). god, those fans were the worst ever, i think after they died about a year or so after i bought the card, i ended up disassembling the entire shroud and put a Zalman aftermarket cooler on it or something like that. great card at the time, performance-wise...but god that thing was ugly, loud, and the cooling didn't last.
 
Would a modded card count?

My Radeon 9700 Pro. One of my friends was soo jelly when I got this..

Volt modded plus heatsink upgrade... the single slot coolers on these were shit and the fans died after a year.. Better cooling was required for higher vCore.


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It was a kit I had to install, solder on the pots, etc. Came with different resistors color coded to vary the fan speed. LOUD. Labels for voltage measurement points. Tweaked out the gpu and ram voltages. All of that work and I think I got 2 maybe 3% more out of it. Still, was a kinda fun project. Kit was like $75, but that was a long time ago so not certain.
 
So much gorgeous ugliness. Thanks to all who provided.
Like the earlier days of the automotive industry we got the some crazy designs. Same goes for PC world.
As time goes on we drop the mundane and celebrate the ugly. The chances. The risk. The insanity!
Your perfect RGB colour matched rig will be forgotten in days. As it should be ;)
 
That’s a beautiful GPU. I had 4 of the 3070s I think and a 3080 Ti.
No it is not. It looks like bulls*&t candy! I buy parts to perform. They are, and should be, there to perform.
Have a fancy case if your ego needs to show it off? I've always been of the opinion in the PC should be under the desk and the magic of my expertise is displayed on the SCREEN!
Reminds me of 4x4 pussies who have all kinds of bling and stupidness only to have a properly designed and ugly 4x4 blast past.
This site (now just a lowly forum...sigh..) was based on everyone sporting a cheap beige box and rocking the internals to the max!
Your [H]ard bling should be your ThermalP, or choice of water vs. killer HS etc... Choice of well planned component purchases.
If you need to look at a static PC with only fans moving you should find another hobby. Children need RGB fluff in that case. No one who is competent in building their own.
If you need a blingy prebuild to show off you aren't [H].
 
No it is not. It looks like bulls*&t candy! I buy parts to perform. They are, and should be, there to perform.
Have a fancy case if your ego needs to show it off? I've always been of the opinion in the PC should be under the desk and the magic of my expertise is displayed on the SCREEN!
Reminds me of 4x4 pussies who have all kinds of bling and stupidness only to have a properly designed and ugly 4x4 blast past.
This site (now just a lowly forum...sigh..) was based on everyone sporting a cheap beige box and rocking the internals to the max!
Your [H]ard bling should be your ThermalP, or choice of water vs. killer HS etc... Choice of well planned component purchases.
If you need to look at a static PC with only fans moving you should find another hobby. Children need RGB fluff in that case. No one who is competent in building their own.
If you need a blingy prebuild to show off you aren't [H].
Runs a 1700X garbage CPU and RTX 2080. Considers himself hard. :rolleyes:
Also everyone can have their own opinion. That GPU had some of the best thermals of any 3000 series card I owned and I owned almost 20 of them from different brands.
 
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