Ok, I have a gigabyte 8800GT with the stock reference cooler. In my quest for lower temps and quietness I purchased the Thermalright v2 copper since it was small and made completely of copper(unlike the accelero).

Upon installing the back thumbscrews I feel as though I am tightening them too much. I look at the card an notice that the PCI Express connector and that bottom portion of the board was bowed badly. I immediately loosen the screws but I think the damage was done at that point. I tighten the screws furthest away from the connector and tightened the screw next to the connector only enough the ensure contact with the gpu.

At this point the card is bowed only very slightly. I install the car in my system and load windows. About two minutes after while viewing my temps in rivatuner the card starts artifacting to hell. my temp was 37C when this happened. I was also touching the cooler and it was very cool to touch. The ram sinks I installed were slightly warm but not hot. The PWM chips were cool to the touch. I also made sure I reset the card to stock clocks before installing the heatsink.

I I remove everything and reinstall the stock heatsink. I should mention that the memory makes no contact with the stock heatsink now since thestock heattape disintegrated when I removed it. The ram wasn't getting hot anyway so that shouldn't be a problem.

The connector is ever so slightly bowed. A straight edge shows this but the bowing is so slight that I can't see it causing problems. The card now artifacts at the bios screen, and hangs when loading windows.

Is it possible the bowing killed the card? Or could it also be possible that I applied too much pressure to the gpu and cracked it? I should mention I saw now visible cracks on the gpu and no visible damage to the card.

Did I just eat $260 (what I paid for it in January)?