EVGA 970 OverHeating - Getting to 100c

[TechBoyJK]

I bought a buddy of mine a GTX970 and it's been fine for the past few months.

Lately, he's saying it's overheating and causing his machine to shut down. I don't have the specs on hand, but it's an 8core AMD Cpu, 600w PS, and has decent cooling (3 case fans in proper order).

I live about an hour away, and was over there last month. His room temp was about 77f; and while he's a smoker, there wasn't much dust/debris near the card and it looked clean. I checked all the fans, and even reset the cpu with new thermal paste.

He typically plays GTA5 and Fallout 4. He says even on medium settings, the card only lasts about an hour before it overheats and he's saying it quickly gets up to 90c right away, and then creeps up to 100c before shutting down. And that with Fallout 4, it lasts a little longer than an hour.

He said it's an hour tops, even if the computer has been off for 12 hours and he turns it on.

He's reported that he updated to the latest nvidia drivers last week, and it didn't help.

Before I go through the process of RMA'ing the card, I want to make sure I've ruled out anything else.

1) Prime95 can run for 6 hours without issue or creating much heat. I had him run it last night and it worked fine.

2) Memtest can run forever without issue

3) he doesn't have any problems with the PC otherwise. It never locks up or gets hot until he starts gaming.

Thoughts? If it were my card, I'd be able to offer more information, but my friend isn't really a techie and I don't even trust him to install MSI afterburner without screwing up the settings. He has a clean Win7 install otherwise.

also: It's this Card

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/evga-fa...raphics-card-black/4583924.p?id=1219773214133

 

[LTC8K6]

GPU-Z should tell you everything going on with the card.

 

[TechBoyJK]

GPU-Z should tell you everything going on with the card.

Thanks. I'm looking into it now.

Does it do stress testing and provide results? ie 'card is getting hot because xyz' or is it just for card info?

 

[Ed1]

Thanks. I'm looking into it now.

Does it do stress testing and provide results? ie 'card is getting hot because xyz' or is it just for card info?

No, GPU-Z just tells you specs and sensor reading of the card.

I would check first the fan speed, it may have 0 rpm fan values at low temps, so you need to heat it to 55C to get fans running (depends on model and type).

Those cards shouldn't go over 75c running BM like Heven or decent modern loaded game.

 

[TechBoyJK]

I had him set it to debug mode and use MSI AB to set the fan speed to 100% all the time to see if it helps. Not a fix but at least helps rule some things out.

 

[Ed1]

what card is it, referance with blower fan or one of 3rd party with dual fans, like Asus, MSI etc.

What temp is it with 100% and what rpm is fan running.
It might just need new paste but be careful some have stickers on screw so if plan to RMA don't remove unless there no sticker.

 

[TechBoyJK]

what card is it, referance with blower fan or one of 3rd party with dual fans, like Asus, MSI etc.

What temp is it with 100% and what rpm is fan running.
It might just need new paste but be careful some have stickers on screw so if plan to RMA don't remove unless there no sticker.

It's the EVGA - Fallout 4 Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Graphics Card - Black

It's basically an EVGA 970 SSC. so it's clocked hot out of the box. And it's known to run hot.

 

[LTC8K6]

GPU-Z does have a render test which loads the card pretty good.

Click the ? next to the Bus Interface box.

 

[xorbe]

Does downclocking help, or does it still eventually overheat

 

[TechBoyJK]

Does downclocking help, or does it still eventually overheat

He said using debug mode and raising fan speed to 100% helped dramatically.

Still waiting for more feedback on if it has still overheated eventually.

 

[xorbe]

It may just need a re-paste and re-mount, also. It's happened before. Save bios, then reflash with stock 970 evga bios.

 

[tweakboy]

Its the HSF that is the culprit. 105c , . check GPU fan, then possibly uopdate your nvidia drivers. gl