Top-level overclocking pushes PC hardware into scenarios that it's never expected to experience on a day-to-day basis. One exception is MSI's new $5000 RTX 5090 Lightning Z graphics card, sporting two 600 W 12V-2x6 connectors, 40-phase VRMs, and even an option to use a special BIOS that pushes the card's limit to a dizzy 2,500 W. Sounds like it can cope with anything, yes? Well, if it's 1.2 volts, then the answer is no.
Over the 30 years that I've been messing around with graphics cards, experimenting with mods, and cooling, I've been relatively lucky to have ruined only a handful of cards. But then again, I've not quite gone to the same extremes as top overclocker Alva Jonathan (aka Lucky_n00b) does in their attempts to push graphics cards in search of world records.
