Radeon HD 4800 series damaged, overheating

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Ampersandle

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Mar 14, 2011
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About a year ago, my computer was damaged somehow in transit. The motherboard was unusable but the graphics card, a Radeon HD 4800 series still seemed to work. Ever since then, though, it has a tendency to overheat easily. I have to manually set the fan to 100%, the GPU and memory clocks to lower than normal and turn down graphic detail in many games (TF2, Arma 2, even Guild Wars) otherwise it overheats and crashes the system.

I'm sure this is a heating issue because even when idle the temperature is at 76C, which seems really high.

So, is there anything I can do to try to fix the problem? Is there any particular areas I can look for on the physical card, maybe some kind of connection between the electronics and the cooling system? Worth taking into a shop?

Thanks
 
is your video card the radeon 4850 with a red fan? you need to tell us which radeon 4800 series it is. My best advice to you would be to take the cooler off and reapply thermal paste and tighten the screws. Perhaps the heatsink got loose.

The original radeon 4850 with the single slot red cooler was always terribly hot.
 
Just had a quick look inside. It's a 4870. Does indeed have a red fan in a red plastic case thingy, with copper tubes and what look like heat sinks.
 
did you leave your GPU in the system when it was in transit? because you should take it out and put it in the box, can flip around in the case and break.
 
Damn. Just tried reapplying thermal paste and cleaning out the dust. On the bright side I didn't screw it up and my card still works; on the not bright side the idle temp is still 75C. Haven't tried it running games yet. Maybe I should just take it in to a shop...

@Unsurper: yes, it was in the case in transit.
 
Tested in game. Temperature peaks at about 101C, depending on load. Which is pretty much what it was doing before. So either I somehow didn't apply the new paste right, or not thickly enough or whatever, or that wasn't the problem. Is there anything else I can try before taking the card to a shop?
 
the only other thing to try is to get a new cooler for it altogether.... that's what the shop is gonna do.
 
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