Question Video card protection plan from the big two online vendors.

[charlietee]

I purchased a ASUS AMD Radeon RX 5700 Overclocked 8G GDDR6 Dual Fan EVO Edition and returned it without opening the box it was shipped in. I requested a "In Store Credit" and will be getting the Powercolor Red Devil RX 5700 XT.

I am considering purchasing the "Protection Plan". Usually I do not purchase them as a general rule. Powercolor has a 2 year warranty. Does the protection plan circumvent the manufacturer warranty. There is a brick and mortar store here in Houston that replaces the item on the spot, be it a processor, motherboard, video card.

Does the online vendor's "protection plan" work the same way or do they make you go through the manufacturers warranty until the 2 years is up.

The particular vendor does not state anything about having to use the OEM warranty. Deal breaker for me to say the very least. Any experience using these protection plans would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stuka87]

The "Protection Plan" is outside of the manufactures warranty. If the item fails, you typically return it to the store you bought it from with the protection plan.

However, in my experience, if a card doesn't have an issue in the first month, they have always lasted many many years for me. And even then the only thing that fails way down the road is typically a fan. Which is cheap and easy to replace. So if it was me, I would skip the protection plan.

 

[MrTeal]

Yeah, GPUs generally fail pretty early on if they are going to. They're also the component in your system that probably has the shortest upgrade cycle. Outside of a fan, by the time many cards start failing at the end of their life it's going to be good for basic display and retro gaming.