graphics card cooling troubles

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metaxa

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well i've been having problems with games lately... the framerate would just randomly go to ****. People told me that, since i haven't cleaned my comp out in over a year, dust could be interfering with the heat dispersion. Well surely enough, my card was heating up to 115c while playing games, and averaging about 85c when idle...people tell me it should never really go above 75c. so, i opened it up and blew out the ton of dust that was in there, but that didn't do the trick..

it seems the fan on my graphics card is shot... full of gunk build up or something..it can hardly turn on its own. the card is a winfast version of the nvidia geforce 6600 gt.

i detatched the fan from the card, tried to clean it out, then reattatached it..but it was still useless.. so i figure i need a new fan to replace the old one.

i ran over to a computer store and the guy told me that they don't sell those kinds of fans anywhere...and the best thing i could do is to put a bunch of holes in my case and mount an external fan there. he says it would be much more efficient at cooling than the fan that you would mount on the card itself.

so my question is, can you not buy those little fans that attatch to your graphics card?
and furthermore, would an external mounted fan on its own work well enough at keeping the graphics card cool? the guy said they go for like 10 bucks and up.. if they do sell fans for the graphics cards themselves, but they are expensive, i want to know if the mounted fan could do the same job.

thanks
 
thanks for the link

so i have to detatch that whole heatsink base that the fan was on top of?

its stuck on there pretty good along with plastic pins and stuff that go right through the chip.
 
i just detatched that whole heatsink thing without incident..

however, the part of the chip that makes contact with the heatsink looks a little messed up..theres this white stuff kinda smeared on it..and a residue left on the bottom of the heatsink

my concern is that the card is somehow permanently damaged from the heat it was subjected to, and even if i install this zalman cooler, i'm still going to have problems. my reasoning is this.. the problem started off as a minor one. i could correct it by restarting the computer, and then it wouldn't reoccur for a few hours, or perhaps even days. But, just before i detatched the old cooler, the problem was frequent. i couldn't play a 3d game for a minute before this framerate inconsistency problem started up.. so i'm worried that something might have happend to the chip itself, causing the problem to escalate. Unless the escalation of the problem is linked to the slow degradation of the fan..meaning that when the problem was infrequent, the fan was still somewhat operational and cooling the chip somewhat.. then as it went to ****, the problem got worse..

but i'm no computer expert..this is the first time i've personally played around with the hardware. could anyone please give me their input?
 
The GPU should be fine. The card was most likely declocking and lowering the voltage to prevent it from overheating. You should be fine if the temperature never went over 120 C.

The residue on the chip is thermal grease. Get a lint-free cloth and wipe it off with rubbing alcohol. If you have any trouble, use a credit card to slip it off.

You'll need to apply grease that comes with the zalman also.
 
sounds good.. thanks a lot for the advice

i guess i'll be back here if it doesn't work out.

seeya
 
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