Video Card Overheating

[thanksvinz]

Help. Why does the temperature of my video card like this? Currenty not doing anything. Just browsing the net (facebook). But LOOK! at the temperature. ATI RADEON HD5450 w/ passive cooling system. No fan. What should i do?

[MagicAndre1981]

add a GPU cooler or a chassis fan.

[Octopuss]

Try to touch the card's cooler with a finger. Is it so hot you can't keep it on? Take it out and use vacuum cleaner on it, maybe it's dusty.

[puntoMX]

If it's not hot to touch you should replace the cooling paste. But, some cards just give false readings and at 84ºC you would have an unstable system (or close to it).

[Octopuss]

Well, the Radeon in question is definitely lowend, but still I think these cards generally can handle temperatures up to like 100 degrees. That said, 84 in idle is wrong as hell

When it comes to the paste, I don't think this should be necessary. From the sound of it I assume the card wasn't toyed around with at all. Usually you don't have to mess around this for several years and most cards have no problems at all. Sometimes clearing the dust is helpful when the cooler starts to make funky noises... So this must be something different, I think. Or maybe it's so full of dust the fan operates at half it's speed. Or... Or... Too little information available at this time!

edit: oh it's passively cooled. I'd check temperature in the case. Thinking further, cooling on these lowend cards is usually not mounted in an awesome way, so I'd check if the heatsink is not loose.

Edited February 22, 2012 by TheWalrus

[thanksvinz]

i tried to touch these black metals (i think) after i use the computer. It was really hot.

[nitroshift]

As previously stated, heatsinks on low end cards may sometimes be poorly attached. I would get some thermal grease, remove the heatsink, clean the old thermal paste, apply the new one and make sure the heatsink seats properly on the GPU.

nitroshift

[puntoMX]

Okay, if the heatsink is real hot (so you burn your fingers) than it must be airflow indeed. If airflow is good (like using an exhaust fan) than it's a bad videocard. Return it for RMA or use it till it burns is the last option.

[Octopuss]

Passively cooled cards are supposed to be hot, but not SO much in idle

If it's a problem of REALLY bad airflow, taking the side plate of the case away should significantly reduce the temperature. Easy test.

[pointertovoid]

Could you try to orient the CPU cooler (yes, CPU, not GPU) so that it blow to the GPU cooler as well?

More: if you have add-in cards near the video card, try to insert them farther away, to ease air flow.

Fingers won't tell between +60°C and +90°C, and many display softwares give bad readings, so you could double-check with a different software, there are many ones. GPU are made much more resistant to heat than CPU, and +84°C would be normal, but at full compute capacity, not at idle.