9800GTX+ Overheat issue - Help!

[Prisonbreak94]

Hey guys,

OK So its recently come to my attention that my GPU is overheating. Now, some of you may tell me that the temperatures I give you are perfectly normal, but I am going to explain why they are worrying me.

Firstly I am going to state that I am running Windows 7 64-bit. My GPU is 9800GTX+ Zotac, here are my temperatures that I am going to whine about:

- Idle (MSN+Internet browsing etc): 59C degrees
- Gaming (COD4 / CSS etc): 62-65C degrees

OK now the reason why I am not happy with these values is because...well, let me start from the beginning. I live in Turkey and it is hot this time of the year. I moved my desktop the frontroom till the weather cools down a little because I have an A/C here, whereas in my room (where my desktop is normally used) I only have a lame fan to cool things down a little.

Before, I was using my desktop in my room (not much air circulation, no A/C like frontroom) and I used to get temperatures around 30-35 degrees when I was idle or not gaming, and I used to get a maximum of 50 degrees when I was gaming. Now, I am in the frontroom with the A/C on and I am getting 59C while on MSN and browsing the net and 62-65 while gaming!

I am going to get a can of compressed air to try and clean up things inside a little, but I want to know what you think is the main cause of my problem? Could it simply be because since I got my desktop (1 year ago) I have only cleaned it a couple of times inside with a vacuum cleaner? Or do you think there is something else going on?

Any help is appreciated. If you are confused, let me know, because sometimes I think that when I am trying to explain my problem I have a lame choice of words lol.. I'll be waiting for replies! Thanks in advance

 

[patonb]

I think its the clean thing. Also clean out the case fans aswell.

Those are what feed your gpu the air.

Also could be the thermal paste on the msain chip.

Becareful when you clean it, to not lodge more crap into the cooler and block off the airflow.

 

[Prisonbreak94]

Hey, thanks for your quick reply. Well I did clean my PC a bit again today with a vacuum cleaner, but I guess it cant help that much. And what do you think about using a vacuum cleaner, because some people are telling me its bad as it can create static electricity whereas some people say its perfectly fine to use it?

The compressed air is sure going to be interesting though, hope it helps.

 

[patonb]

I think its all about your vacuum.

So i really have no answer..

 

[Prisonbreak94]

Well - I just got an electric blower - 800 Watts and used it on my desktop. A fair amount of dust came out.
I am now back in my frontroom and sadly, my GPU is still 55C on IDLE status (MSN + Internet Explorer - no games!)

Anyone have any ideas - what can I do?

Edit: The blower looks like this: http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/743155/8339575/0/1237439695/Electric_Blower_LH701.jpg

Just incase you are confused as to what I meant by electric blower. It is very powerful!

 

[Slaymate]

I don't know where you shop at in Turkey, but if you can find one of these it will help.
Arctic Cooling

 

[patonb]

Dear lord.. now thats a blow job! You really need to get the dust out from under the casing. You could try removing the shroud and clean it that way.

What program do you use to check temps?

 

[Prisonbreak94]

Lol. I got a lot of dust out of the case trust me, I can't get anymore out because there can't be anymore. I've cleaned it pretty well. I use SpeedFan and Everest Ultimate to make sure the readings are correct. They both tell me the same temperatures so there can't be any mistake.

Slaymate, I really don't want to spend more money to be honest. Thing is it was working at a certain level (30-40C on idle) a couple months ago and now its quite higher than that with same or even better conditions. I am trying to understand what could have caused this and finding a solution more simple than having to spend more money on my system.

the only difference since the 30-40 C on idle temperatures from a few months ago is the fact that I now have win7 64 bit whereas then i had win vista 32bit. maybe since i installed win7 I don't have some software or something maybe the default settings for the GPU are messed up, who knows?

 

[EnToxication]

1.Check Bios for voltage settings.
2.Newer drivers make your GPU hotter. I don't know why, but it does.
3.Vista Sucks and obviously uses lot of useless resources, thus making system hotter
4.NVidia's cooler sucks in my opinion, I always remove the stock ones.
5.Make sure fans and your Blower is blowing wind into the case, not sucking them out.

 

[Slaymate]

There is probably still a lot of dust in the heatsink assembly of the video card. You should remove the card from the PC and throughly blow it out. If it was me, I would disassemble the card itself, cleaning it throughly and apply new thermal paste, something like this for the GPU Newegg.com - Tuniq TX-2 Cooling Thermal Compound - Thermal Compound / Grease . The memory chips usually have a white thermal pad between them and the card's housing. Some of these pads will tear and break apart. You can use a "White" Thermal paste to put them back together again, something like this Newegg.com - Arctic Silver Ceramique Thermal Compound - Thermal Compound / Grease .

I'm still spending your money, but only a little now