My video card is frying itself, what do I do?

[vnf4ultra]

Ok, I have a leadtek a6200td card, which is a nvida 6200 agp card, but I had it unlocked to a 6600 and overclocked a little. It always ran a little hot, about 55C, but recently the temps have skyrocketed. It gets over 100C(boiling point), at load, and idles about 66C. I have a good front panel fan blowind directly at the card, and I've just installed a pci slot cooler below it, which moves a lot of air, but no temp difference. I don't get it. It's getting way more cooling than it should need, and it's still very hot. The heatsink is on very firmly, and I can't see any gap between the hsf and the core. The only thing I can think to try is to apply some tim to the core and reapply the hsf. I "relocked" it to a 6200,and am running at stock now, with my cpu at stock, and it still has the same temps, I thought maybe the oc'ing was making it too hot, but it does it at stock too. I thought maybe the sensor went bad, but when it gets over 95C it displays artifacts(white dots) in games/benches, so it is actually too hot.

I don't want to spend any money, but I probably will have to. I guess I can't really rma it, since I've oc'ed it either.

Any help?

 

[vnf4ultra]

Nobody can help me?

I don't know what to do, it's at 76C now. It has to be the heatsink right? It mustn't be making good contact. I think it wouldn't run much hotter without a heatsink at all. Hmm.

 

[abit late]

Having checked that the fan is working and the heatsink is free of dust I would remove the heat sink, clean up the mating surfaces and apply a fresh layer of thermal grease. Its possible that the heatisnk has a thermal adhesive on it that has cracked up and degraded. I really can't imagine what else it could be.

HTH
al

 

[mailpup]

Besides the possible heatsink contact problem, is the GPU fan going fast enough? Could it be failing? Besides temperature, does your utility program monitor fan speed? Just a thought.

 

[vnf4ultra]

I can't monitor the fan speed, but I'd say it's about 2000-3000rpm. I put a 80mm fan(good cfm fan too), right under it and blew on the heatsink, it only cooled down like 1C, I don't get it. It looks like it has a double stick thermal(umm. whatever it's called, it's a double stick pad type thing.)

It seems it gets hotter the faster I turn my case fans up. The case temp is only 25C, even with my prescott cpu(cpu hotter, around 50ishC.)

Thanks for responding, I appreciate your help.

 

[Justin]

Because you said it seems to get hotter when you increase case fan speeds, I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say it could be a pocket of stale air. It may be that portion of the case is getting no circulation, or has a slight vacuum effect, and heat is building up in the area.

Have you tried removing the side panel for a few hours and seeing if that makes a difference?

 

[mailpup]

I think maybe abit late is right. All things considered it seems the most logical to me.

 

[vnf4ultra]

Ok, I took off my heatsink on the card and looked at the core. It had some T.I.M. but not much, and it seemed dried. I removed it, and then applied some new TIM(some cheap stuff that came with a heatsink). I reattached the hsf, and rebooted. It didn't fry at least(I thought I might have put too much on), but it seems somewhat better than before. It idles at 60C instead of 66C+. It also seems to get to only about 90C load instead of 100C. So it helped, and hopefully it will run ok at those temps, it gets artifacts at 100C, so if it doesn't get that hot I guess it'll work. I don't think those temps are right though, I can touch the heatsink and not be burned at a reported 80C. It feels warm, but no where near 80C. I also still have the pci slot cooler in. I don't know what caused this. It was running perfectly unlocked and overclocked for weeks, but then suddenly it skyrocketed. Weird.

Any other suggestions? Maybe I should just get a new heatsink or watercool it, although that'd be expensive.