So if you've ever tried finding a problem in any complicated system, you probably know this rule - don't do several things that can cause issues at the same time, of course not in a case when you expect their interaction to cause issues. If the issue appears when you did these two things, you will have to check again with just one of them to make sure it's not the other's fault that the issue is there.
I betrayed that principle today.
I got myself new pair of RAM sticks with a huge memory increase and a new graphics card, and after installing them both (first time tinkering with my own PC!) I saw:
issue №1: there's zero output out of the new graphics card.
I eventually figured out that I had no idea I had to plug an additional power cable into it, so being very thankful to folks that pointed that out I launched the PC and saw issue №1 yet again.
Something was wrong.
My next idea was to install back the old graphics card, maybe this new one is defective in some way - who knows, right? But as I put it back, I saw a different, but very similar isue:
issue №2: there's zero output out of the old graphics card.
Something was wrong.
After thinking for a little bit I had a truly brilliant idea: what if I'm an idiot who can't manage to install a simple pair of RAM sticks? After installing the old RAM back and seeing the system load as it should I've decided that this theory exactly described the existing situation.
The narrative structure requires there to be an issue №3, but thankfully I managed to avoid it by double checking that the new RAM was installed correctly, and then triple checking that I've installed the videocard as correctly as possible to avoid issues №4 and №5. Maybe even №6, but I obviously can't see all the possible futures.
Don't be like me, do such things one at a time if you're not sure about their outcomes.