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Abnormally high temps?

Associate
Joined
21 Sep 2007
Posts
453
I have an ATI HD4800 series card (Old skool I know!)

It serves me really well, I can play hours of Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2 on pretty high settings.

But I'm starting to get annoyed as with some games, i.e. Skyrim, it will hit temps of over 85 degrees and the PC shuts down.

Now I can override the fan speed to 100% but its damn noisy. Could a good clean with a can of air fix this?

I even have an extra fan blowing air over the card, but it doesn't seem to help much.

Any idea's folks? Don't want to fork out if I can help it (and then I might as well get a whole new system!)
 
Associate
Joined
15 Nov 2010
Posts
668
Yes, if you have never given it a clean, its definitely time for a good on blow!
Try and get it as clean as possible.

Also 85c shouldnt be causing shut downs.
What are your other specs?
 
Associate
OP
Joined
21 Sep 2007
Posts
453
Sorry, yea it's most likely going past that, I've seen it on 85 degress in the ATI utility so it most prob going past 90 easily!

My other specs are AMD Phenom X2 unlocked to an X4, Gigabyte MA-770-UD3 and 4gb RAM (though I'm on 32bit Win7 - don't ask lol)

Pretty old, but it's still a beast!
 
Soldato
Joined
31 Jul 2004
Posts
3,730
You would be well advised to clean and re apply some new thermal compound as i imagine you have cooked the old stuff into a crusty mess ;)
 
Associate
OP
Joined
21 Sep 2007
Posts
453
Time for an update!

I gave the GFX card a good blow (!!!) and after booting up, the ATI software now reports temps around 60 degrees with a fan speed of 10%, as opposed to 85 degrees and 70%!

One problem though - the fan still "rattles". In fact I think it rattles more now. Giving it a nudge stops it for a bit, but it comes back within minutes.

I tried pointing the straw of the gas duster into the gap where the fans bearings would be and gave a few blasts, but it is still rattling!

Any ideas?

Is it possible to "pop" the fan blades off to see the bearings underneath?
 
Associate
OP
Joined
21 Sep 2007
Posts
453
Another update, should make you smile

So, I tried to tackle this dreadful rattling fan last night. I knew what I had to do, so I went ahead an removed the fan from the GFX card heatsink.

Unfortunately, it was a sealed device, with no retainer clip to be found on the underneath which should have allowed easy removal of the blades. Trying to pry them off results in me snapping a blade. Great.

Undeterred I set about modifying my GFX card. I found a small case fan and splice the wire to the plug on the GFX card that powers the fan. Booted up the PC to check the fan was getting enough power and not drawing too much. It worked!

To mount this new fan, I got out the trusty superglue!

Temps are now below 60 degrees, although the fan is registering at 0% speed (although when I override it and set it to 20% or more, it does spin faster. Not sure why its not registering properly)

So yea, after a clean and breaking stuff, my temps are much better :)
 
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