My XP build was an old Asus P5Q paired with a Core 2 Duo E6750 and a GTX 280. The mobo developed some issue with the RAM slots and became unusable. Upgraded with a Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P and a Phenom II X4 965 BE and run it for a while without issue until i fried the GTX 280 despite replacing the thermal paste and keeping it clean. Replaced it with a HD 4890 that lasted a few hours and started displaying artifacts. Replaced it with another HD 4870 and everything was perfect for a few weeks again. But now guess what, no way i can use the boot menu of the Gigabyte board, it just shows three colored square dots.

Out of frustration with the reliability of old hardware, i've decided to go the "overkill" route with other newer hardware i had in my closet, mainly stuff from the early 2010s and guess what, no more issues at all. Since i'm only running games from the 2004-2008 era in 1280x1024, i've decided to run the (fingers crossed) solid HD 4870 with my Z97 Haswell platform.

I was curious to know if some of you here are running such a weird combo? Newer CPU + old GPU or the other way around. Also, am i the only one with lots of failure from hardware from the period correct (in my case 2007-2009) era?