This is the main problem of the top NVIDIA video cards of that time.
And no conspiracy theories.
They all dried out completely, overheated and burned.

No conspiracy theories here - Xenos is one of the prime examples of bumpgate related failures and it was an ATI chip, based on something from x1000 series IIRC. This is pretty much the only fact i am aware of - everything else would be speculation. What was defective and what was not is unknown, the same as it is unknown for nvidia - lists from well known lawsuit(s) are most definitely incomplete.

Dried thermal compound would have played a role once the stuff was old enough (several years at least), but also it usually is not as critical as people may think. I've seen a lot of different hardware with 20+ years old thermal compound and my opinion is - all the horror stories about it are no more than myths. Thermal transfer is hindered, but more often than not - inconsequentially so. You'd see something like a 5C difference, or with temperature controlled fans - slightly higher fan RPM and that's it.

Not to mention that what people often perceive as "dried thermal compound" can simply be very high viscosity thermal compound from the factory...

I am yet to see an example which would change my mind about it...

I would agree with you completely if we were talking about Tualatin.
No energy-saving technologies, the temperature is always 45 degrees regardless of the load and 30 watts of consumption.

But GT(x? I don't remember all these NVIDIA prefixes)560, which I personally had to delidded a year after the warranty expired, completely disagree with you.

All my 9800 GT cards have broken fan regulation. Not only they run fan at like 35-40% regardless of temperature, fan control is inverted. If you set it to 20% the fan runs faster. Re-pasting has lead to 4-5'C temperature reduction. I didn't delid any of them. Some had thermal compound that was completely solid, more like burned to the die, others had thermal compound similar to MX-2, very hard to remove. Keep them at about 60'C while gaming and they should last.

Back then people didn't use mesh cases and case airflow was very poor.

shevalier wrote on Today, 07:26:

I would agree with you completely if we were talking about Tualatin.
No energy-saving technologies, the temperature is always 45 degrees regardless of the load and 30 watts of consumption.

But GT(x? I don't remember all these NVIDIA prefixes)560, which I personally had to delidded a year after the warranty expired, completely disagree with you.

Well, it is completely possible and likely that i simply have not seen cases severe enough. And then it can lead to more subtle issues like local overheating in areas which are no longer making good contact...

But i've seen so many people break their stuff trying to fix something that was not broken in the first place that i am kind of allergic to whole idea of thermal compound related "maintenance".

At least with modern hardware there is no need to guess anymore or replace thermal compound "just in case", ability to monitor temperatures including hotspot makes decision when to delid or just repaste very easy to make.

AlexZ wrote on Today, 08:24:

All my 9800 GT cards have broken fan regulation. Not only they run fan at like 35-40% regardless of temperature, fan control is inverted. If you set it to 20% the fan runs faster. Re-pasting has lead to 4-5'C temperature reduction. I didn't delid any of them. Some had thermal compound that was completely solid, more like burned to the die, others had thermal compound similar to MX-2, very hard to remove. Keep them at about 60'C while gaming and they should last.

Back then people didn't use mesh cases and case airflow was very poor.

Yep, this has been pretty much my experience as well. Pull apart a card with 20 year old completely solidified thermal compound, replace it, get ~5C improvement.

Also somehow i hate modern "mesh cases" and cases built out of fans. Over9000 fans blowing in random directions through overplayed mesh+dust filter do not result in good airflow. This becomes very evident looking at how industrial systems, or even just gaming consoles are designed.

It is possible to get great airflow with cooling better than on open stand with just 1-2 correctly positioned fans in a case which is properly designed and is not made out of mesh. It is impossible with mesh though, so mesh is actively harmful in many situations.

All my 9800 GT cards have broken fan regulation. Re-pasting has lead to 4-5'C temperature reduction. I didn't delid any of them

That's nonsense. G92 cards had no lid.

Archer57 wrote on Today, 08:52:

But i've seen so many people break their stuff trying to fix something that was not broken in the first place that i am kind of allergic to whole idea of thermal compound related "maintenance".

Likewise, considering that people don't care whether it's an industrial Honeywell or a GD900 from AliExpress.
Most often, they can't even get the temperature they had before disassembling.

But with the GT560, there were no options. The video cards were from the kids of colleagues who were hanging out in online games.
And they glitching and/or turned off.

P.S. I'll be honest about myself.
Of my retro PCs, I can hang out for a few hours in a few games on Turion + Vortex.
The rest - well, they turn on sometimes.
But not for hours-long battles in Stalker and FEAR.
Just to look at the interface, run 3Dmark once.
With such use, well, what kind of overheating is there.

The Serpent Rider wrote on Today, 09:14:

All my 9800 GT cards have broken fan regulation. Re-pasting has lead to 4-5'C temperature reduction. I didn't delid any of them

That's nonsense. G92 cards had no lid.

Mine certainly don't. I haven't see all of them that were made. Picture above in the thread does show de-lidding, maybe for a different core.