This is the video card in question: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150563
I'm not entirely sure what the problem is. I started getting really high temps: 64ºC on idle and on load it would get to 109ºC and then crash my system. I let someone use the computer for a good year and a half and apparently they never cleaned it. So it was caked with dust. I removed the fan and heatsink, cleaned the dust and applied arctic silver 5 thermal paste after cleaning the old paste off. Which btw had WAY too much paste on it, it was even covering the main board. So when I put everything back together and started the computer I was getting a little better idle temps of 55ºC not great but better.
So I downloaded and installed MSi Afterburner and tweaked the fan speeds a bit and I was getting 36ºC idle and under heavy load the gpu would not get any hotter than 68ºC and this lasted a couple days. I thought everything was fixed. Then randomly while playing a game the temp got to 105ºC I immediately closed everything and now the GPU will not idle under 52ºC and on load it overheats again and gets to past 100ºC, generally I catch it before it gets to 109ºC which I think is the temp is shuts the computer down.
So what now? Is the gpu fried or perhaps the sensors? Should I even waste my money to get a 3rd party heatsink/fans or replace the sensors? I'm thinking on upgrading to a 280x anyways but I'm trying to save a bit because of the inflated prices (thanks to litecoin miners...), so should I just bide my time or is this card salvageable?
Thanks for your assistance.
*Edit* BTW my case has 2x 120mm case fans and a 140mm case fan on top. Plenty of air flow.
My build (copy/pasted from receipt, truncated):
XFX HD-687X-CNFC Radeon HD 6870 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
MSI 880GM-E43 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS BRONZE Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan
I'm not entirely sure what the problem is. I started getting really high temps: 64ºC on idle and on load it would get to 109ºC and then crash my system. I let someone use the computer for a good year and a half and apparently they never cleaned it. So it was caked with dust. I removed the fan and heatsink, cleaned the dust and applied arctic silver 5 thermal paste after cleaning the old paste off. Which btw had WAY too much paste on it, it was even covering the main board. So when I put everything back together and started the computer I was getting a little better idle temps of 55ºC not great but better.
So I downloaded and installed MSi Afterburner and tweaked the fan speeds a bit and I was getting 36ºC idle and under heavy load the gpu would not get any hotter than 68ºC and this lasted a couple days. I thought everything was fixed. Then randomly while playing a game the temp got to 105ºC I immediately closed everything and now the GPU will not idle under 52ºC and on load it overheats again and gets to past 100ºC, generally I catch it before it gets to 109ºC which I think is the temp is shuts the computer down.
So what now? Is the gpu fried or perhaps the sensors? Should I even waste my money to get a 3rd party heatsink/fans or replace the sensors? I'm thinking on upgrading to a 280x anyways but I'm trying to save a bit because of the inflated prices (thanks to litecoin miners...), so should I just bide my time or is this card salvageable?
Thanks for your assistance.
*Edit* BTW my case has 2x 120mm case fans and a 140mm case fan on top. Plenty of air flow.
My build (copy/pasted from receipt, truncated):
XFX HD-687X-CNFC Radeon HD 6870 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
MSI 880GM-E43 AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS BRONZE Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC
Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan
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