Temperature running away on 4850

T

Tim James

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 27, 2007
Messages
313
I've got a 4850 with the stock heatsink fan on there. I had removed it at one point to try an aftermarket unit, but it wasn't cooling the memory well enough so I had to put the stock one back on. Ever since then, the card overheats so much in newer games that the PC shuts off due to internal protection against temperatures above 120C. No crashes or lockups anywhere else and no artifacting, ever.

I pegged the fan at 100%. I even tried turning the clocks down 150 MHz in ATI Tray Tools but eventually the temperature creeps up toward shutdown in most newer games. That seems fishy.

After a recent re-application I fired up the PC and arrived in Windows at 55C. Played a game up to about 80C, seemed great, powered down for a few minutes. Re-entered Windows at 80C. Tried a game and it gets to 115+ quickly. With the fan at 100%, it took 10 minutes to get the temperatures back to 80C. I put it back to auto and now with the fan at 50% it is slowly crawling back up to around 90C.

Could there be some internal damage here that guarantees thermal runaway? Maybe the heatsink isn't making contact with the die, but the thermal compound (I've tried Arctic Silver and some generic white paste) looks to be spread evenly and I carefully snugged the hardware in multiple attempts now.
 
Seems like a contact issue to me. When I first got a 4850 the sucker was hot. One of the first things I did was install a Thermaltake Duo Orb cooler and some ram/vrm sinks. Stayes in the low 60's at full load.
 
jvz555 said:
Did you clean the heatsink for dust?
Click to expand...
I knew I forgot to mention something. Yes, it's all cleaned out.

Like I said, I tried an old aftermarket cooler but the RAM was getting too hot and causing lockups unless I way underclocked the memory. Maybe I could get a better brand (of ramsinks) and do a better job of that, but it doesn't explain why these temperatures are running away. I don't care if it's at 60C or 100C, as long as it doesn't shut down on me.

I'm a bit lost about how to fix poor heatsink contact after redoing it 4 or 5 times now.
 
Last edited:
Tim James said:
I knew I forgot to mention something. Yes, it's all cleaned out.

Like I said, I tried an old aftermarket cooler but the RAM was getting too hot and causing lockups unless I way underclocked the memory. Maybe I could get a better brand (of ramsinks) and do a better job of that, but it doesn't explain why these temperatures are running away. I don't care if it's at 60C or 100C, as long as it doesn't shut down on me.

I'm a bit lost about how to fix poor heatsink contact after redoing it 4 or 5 times now.
Click to expand...

Take it off. Clean off the old paste and put on new thremal paste. Make SURE that its making good contact with the core.
 
What about a bad temperature sensor? Do overheated cores usually cause artifacts and lockups, or is that more when the memory is too hot? I have none of that stuff, although the heatsink is quite hot to the touch so it must be heating up some amount.
 
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