Visiontek 5850 overheating issue?

[Flapjack]

I'm trying to troubleshoot this one and I'm getting a little frustrated. I think it might be an overheating issue, but I'm not 100% sure.

I built my wife her first actual PC last Christmas (she'd previously only had laptops) and she's just recently gotten into PC gaming (from consoles). When I first built her PC, she was using the onboard video from the A10-6800K APU I built the system with, but it wasn't good for much. I decided to give her the Radeon 5850 2GB from my PC, which had largely gone idle over the past few years.

Lately, she's been playing a game called Ether. She'll play for 15-20 minutes, then get a steady beeeeep that seems to be coming from the video card. The card is definitely hot as blazes. Sometimes, the fan seems to ramp up right as it happens, but doesn't always. It seems to stay at 30% fan speed or so until the beeping.

The first thing I did (after making sure the card and PC innards were clean) was install the MSI Afterburner program and have her manually set the fan speed up when playing. At 60% fan speed (which is the threshold of tolerable noise), GPU temp seems to sit at around 60C (before installing afterburner, temps were around 72C at 30% fan speed).

Now, she can play for about 30-45 minutes before it starts to beep. If she alt/tabs to the desktop, the beeping stops immediately and the temps start to drop. She can then alt/tab back to the game and play for another 15-30 minutes before it beeps again. Still, the temps never seem to spike or anything... it just seems to be after a while of playing, but having the fan speed higher definitely seems to help.

The other thing I considered was maybe the power supply, as I've read these cards can set off the alarm for voltage as well. The power supply is a Corsair Enthusiast Series 80 plus bronze (CP-9020039-NA650W).

Other than that, the PC is pretty empty. It's a NZXT Phantom 530 case (stock case fans), with a single hard drive, 8GB of memory, single optical drive. The case is not inside a cabinet or anything, not that it would fit in one, lol. I've never had the card overheat on me, but then again, I haven't gamed on it seriously in a few years.

Any ideas?

Video card: http://www.amazon.com/VisionTek-Radeon-Express-Graphics-900297/dp/B002QEBGGA
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146106
PSU: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E98I0G/ref=pe_385040_30332200_pe_309540_26725410_item

 

[Flapjack]

For troubleshooting purposes, she dropped the fan speed back down to stock and played the game again. It started beeping after 5 minutes. The temperature was 69C this time. With the fan at 60%, it would beep after 30+ minutes of playing, with the temps at 60C.

 

[H-street]

Did you repaste it? My 5870 recently had been over heating and I took it apart and applied new thermal paste ad it's back to its happy cool self

 

[Yakk]

Yeah, the 5xxx series has been out for a number of years now and I've been repasting a lot of them in the last year or so, looks like they due.

 

[Flapjack]

While it is over four years old, and probably could use some repasting, I think we may have stumbled onto something else.

Everywhere I searched kept bringing me to stories of people forgetting to plug in their 6-pin connectors... or only plugging in one. Others had cheap power supplies and had to upgrade. In particular, a NewEgg review referred to this as the "infinite beep" and said to make sure you had a good power supply. Of course, I had plugged in both, and was using what I feel is a good power supply.

My wife, being the more of observant of us, pointed out that the issue started happening around the same time our old UPS started acting up. The last few times the power went out, the UPS battery wasn't strong enough to keep our PCs running (both are plugged into an old Cyberpower 825). I ordered a new battery, which is sitting on my desk, but hadn't installed it yet.

So we plugged her directly into the wall last night and she played almost an hour without the beep. She's going to play some more today to see if that is actually the issue, but does that seem plausible to anyone?

 

[rhansen5_99]

While I am glad that you appear to be going now, I would still keep an eye on the temps as they appear to be a bit high, I would suggest Artic Mx-4 or something similar if you decide to re-paste the card.

 

[Flapjack]

Still seems to be good, so far.... though I'm not holding my breath. It would be really weird if that was the problem...

I ordered some MX-4, just in case.

 

[Flapjack]

I wanted to follow up to let everyone know that it was indeed the UPS that was causing the issue. She has since had zero issues, even with the most taxing of GPU loads for hours on end. Damnedest thing....

 

[horrorshow]

A 5850 is probably the most I've ever spent on a card. Back in late '09.

The fan gave out after Quakecon (I assume because of travel)....

I tore that horrible XFX heatsink apart but to no avail.

I will never buy XFX again.

Glad your card is back up and running!!

 

[Flapjack]

A 5850 is probably the most I've ever spent on a card. Back in late '09.

The fan gave out after Quakecon (I assume because of travel)....

I tore that horrible XFX heatsink apart but to no avail.

I will never buy XFX again.

Glad your card is back up and running!!

Hahaha, I think that is the most I've spent on a video card as well. Surprisingly enough, I've had no issues with it. Technically, this was a non-issue, as the card wasn't at fault.