[OmegaX]

Just got an older Dell workstation for $99 that has an XFX 9800GT in it. The strange thing is that the 9800GT crashes/overheats at around the 75-80 mark, sometimes even lower. While playing games after about 10-15 minutes the system hard locks and crashes. These temps seem fairly normal, so I don't know what would be causing this.

I managed the fix the problem by making custom fan profiles that make the GPU fan run at 95% all the time. This made the temps drop tremendously, and they don't get over 55 C when gaming. No more crashing after this, but I don't know how good it is for my GPU to make the fan run max speed all the time. Not too mention the noise is incredibly annoying.

 

[Bit_reaper]

Well running the fan at max does noting bad to the card except make the fan wear out faster. Its possible that its not the GPU it self that overheats but rather the vram for example. Have you checked the thermal paste and pads?

 

[OmegaX]

That sounds like a probable cause. I'm guessing I'll need to remove the cooler to check that? I've never taken apart a video card before.