C.Jackson

I was playing Crysis for about 10 minutes earlier when I started experiencing frame rate drops every so often. To explain it better, I could stare at a tree and not move, but the frame rate would stay steady for a few seconds and then would drop around 15FPS or so and then repeat. Upon exiting I looked in my tray and saw "104". Needless to say my eyes widened and I quickly opened the background monitor to see where the temperatures had been....


I have seen the temperature head for 90C, but never have I seen it exceed 100C! I figured that it had a little dust buildup, because when I first bought it, it idled around 52C - now it's 10C higher - but I never figured it for being this bad. I guess what I need to know is this:
A) How do I remove the dust as easily as possible from the reference cooler?
B) Would doing such a procedure void my warranty?
C) Would it be in my best interest to replace the reference cooler thus voiding the warranty?

This is all assuming dust is the cause of my heat problems and the card is still alright. I haven't put the card under any kind of load since so I'm going to try and play Far Cry 2 for a little while and see how I fare there. If it fails it looks like it's time to RMA! Oh and incase you were wondering, yeah stock clocks.

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Mosoner

I hope you bumped up the fan in Rivatuner before playing your games, defaults in the neighborhood of 40% or some low number like that....Might want to find yourself a little vaccuum to suck out all that junk! lawl

C.Jackson

Like my sig says 100%....

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The Master Chief

Get some compressed air and blow it out with that.

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abhay

1. Try removing the dust with a help of a bulb-blower. If you can remove the outer cover it would be better.However it will not void any warranty

I think your card is fine , the problem might be due to the dust accumulated on the card.

Try doing this & while on games keep the duty cycle of the fan @100 %...

C.Jackson

Alright I took the Shop Vac to my computer about 10 minutes ago and that seems to have dropped my card temps a couple of degrees at idle. I still never took the cover off, but was able to remove some dust from the sides. How exactly do I remove the cover? I saw some small things on the side, but was a little reluctant to start pulling and pushing on my once $300 card. I know there is probably all kinds of dust still trapped inside, hell I can even still see some that I couldn't get to. I was seriously debating replacing the cooler on my card, but after looking it seems there isn't room for me to, damn micro-BTX board.

EDIT: Here's my stress test, Crysis with custom config at 1440x900.

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Jolly-Swagman

C.Jackson you Most Definitely dont want to use a vacuum cleaner to clean out computer parts as they are highly renowned for static, and that will kill your components
best use compressed air can or as someone already stated on of those camera bulb blowers

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Smooth-n-Fold Cube Case Mod | OCZ Vendetta 2/AC-Freezer 7 Bolt Thru Mods | External CMOS Reset Key Switch
Folding@home-T32

FieryCoD

Have you tried reapplying thermal paste on the card? The most I've ever got on load is about 80c, and that was with dust on my card and not reapplying thermal paste on the GPU.

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Blueberry Muffins Ultra-Mega-Group!

　／l、
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　l、 ~ヽ
　じしf_, )ノ Q6600 @ 3.6GHz.

C.Jackson

I'm pretty sure that the reason it's getting so hot is because of the crappy case it's sitting in added to the fact that it's somewhat dusty. It works fine and I haven't had any problems from it yet although I always watch my temps and never let it exceed 100C anymore. I'm going to run ATITool for about 30 minutes or so and make sure I don't get any artifacts, just to check everything is alright, because I'm building a new rig soon and I'll just order a new GPU cooler when I order everything. I would replace it now, but there isn't a GPU cooler on the market that'll fit in my current case or on my current motherboard. I thought the HR-03 GT might fit if mounted like below, but it may not. I'm still interested in removing the cover if anyone can tell me how. Oh yeah, I shoulda ordered a modular power supply....





EDIT: ATITool confirmed the card is perfectly fine. Only got to 96C for a split second and stayed at 95C most of the time, seems like Crysis is a better stress test. Now if I can just get the dust out maybe it'll cool off a little more.....

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alwaysAMD

Just unscrew all the phillips screws on the bottom of the card, pops right off.

I have the same card and my temps never hit more than 65c with the stock cooler at 100%.