6800gt running at 90degrees Centigrade

[Scolaire]

And idling at around 71degrees. I've opened the case and taken as much dust as I could see out of the fan and the pc in general but it'd still running crazy hot. I even ran it with the side of the case off and it went up to 94degrees after a few minutes of counter strike source.
Funny thing is, this only started a few days ago. I've never had problems with it before. Admittedly I've been using it a bit lately (got a whole pile of hl2 mods ) but apart from that I haven't done anything radical to the pc. To make matters
worse when I tried to use speedfan to see what temp my cpu was running at speedfan came back with this error message.

I'm going to open up the case again and really go through it(was in a hurry last time) but if anyone can see something I'm missing or can tell me what that error message means i'd be grateful. Thanks.

 

[HPCE_Larry]

I would recommend adding another case fan. good 120mm fans can be bought for ~$6-7. My friends card was running quite hot as well and then he got another fan and now it is much cooler.

 

[CCT]

I saw a set of pictures on the net where they took the heatsink off a high end card and the back side was plugged with crud - no air circulation.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

94C is very hot for a 6800GT. You might want to consider an alternate cooling solution like the Accelero X1 from Arctic Cooling or a similar one from Zalman.

 

[Scolaire]

Thanks for the replies. I went to town on the thing and got every piece of dust I could out, and it's a bit better, running idle at about 66degrees right now, but it never used to idle that high. We havw some really great weather here atm (well great for Ireland). Temperatures are at around 16-18 degrees. Do you reckon that's what might have caused the overheating?

 

[CCT]

My 6800 GT OC idles GPU 43 c with a reported GPU ambient of 38 (Everest Home sensor readout).


Runs up around 70ish gaming like in Oblivion.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

@Scolaire, I don't think it's the weather, but rather the HSF on the card itself. It's probably dodgy now, so you need a new one.

 

[RamenNoodles]

What I use to help cool my VGA card is a PCI slot blower.

Similar to this one - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835888602

They also sell these at Staples, Office Depot, CompUSA, etc for around the same price. Plus you wouldnt have to wait for it to ship.

They do help to dramatically reduce heat and increase airflow.

 

[Scolaire]

@Scolaire, I don't think it's the weather, but rather the HSF on the card itself. It's probably dodgy now, so you need a new one.

Yeah you're probably right. It's just over a year old but I think it's messed up. Sometimes the pc won't start properly, I'll just get a blue screen and a stop message. I'd say it's the card.