What to do about a suddenly overheating 7800GT?

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Sep 19, 2004
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Like the title says, I have an 7800GT that has served me well for 2 years until now. I just noticed a sudden drop in framerate while playing TF2 that happens after 5-10 minutes of playtime. I downloaded a temperature monitor and low and behold I'm sitting at 88 degrees celsius. This just randomly happened last night, and the only thing that changed was I upgraded my Hard Drive, which shouldn't matter, I would think. Anyway, what do I do about this? The fan on the cooler isn't broken or anything, as far as I can tell.
 
take the drive out....does it go away and temps remain normal? if so thats the problem. weird a hdd would do that, doubtful but ive seen stranger

its a kinda old card right? 2 year or so? maybe its worth it to invest in a replacement fan/cooler
 
I doubt it's dust, since this is a relatively recent phenomenon. I've not noticed anything drastic before last night, and dust would be building slowly.
 
update: moved the HD farther away from the card and wiped away some dust, no change. Got done with a half an hour of TF2 and it was at 100 celcius. Framerate cut in half after a few minutes of gameplay, with some occasional slow-mo action, which looks cool, but is probably a bad sign. Any cheap aftermarket cooler I can get for this thing that will hold me for a few months till I have enough cash to upgrade? Maybe this guy? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186001
 
Before you buy a new cooler, I recommend you try putting some new thermal past on the contact between the heatsink and chip. Just remove the heatsink, clean off the old stuff, then add some new paste and re-seat. The card is obviously overheating, and if the fan is working, this is likely the cause.
 
I cleaned off and reapplied thermal paste on the contact, but the temperatures still skyrocket above 100c under load. It's even idling at around 60-65c. When I pulled to cooler off there were several cloth strips covering what looked like little black squares or circuits, and some of those looked a little shabby. I've no idea what they were or what they are covering, but could that have anything to do with it?
 
I know you said you replaced the thermal compound, but is there sufficient pressure holding the heatsink in place?

If not, you may want to screw things down a bit more.

If that doesn't help, just get another video card cooler from Newegg. There are all sorts of sub-20 dollar choices out there.
 
I cleaned off and reapplied thermal paste on the contact, but the temperatures still skyrocket above 100c under load. It's even idling at around 60-65c. When I pulled to cooler off there were several cloth strips covering what looked like little black squares or circuits, and some of those looked a little shabby. I've no idea what they were or what they are covering, but could that have anything to do with it?

Those black squares are the memory chips on the videocard. Don't worry about those too much, it's the GPU that is producing all of that heat.
 
What I would recommend to do was pour some water on it (4-51/4 cups).

:p

Kidding of course. Maybe it has something to do with airflow. When you put in your HD it could have blocked Incoming cold air or outgoing hot air therefore making more hot air gather around your GPU therefore making your GPU hotter.
 
I even rolled back to older drivers because someone told me that the latest forcewares were causing overheating in the 7-series of cards and that didn't help. Everything is screwed and seated on just fine, too. My case is small and has bad airflow, which I will be fixing this weekend, but I don't think that is the problem since it wasn't an issue until just recently. Up to 114c when I stopped playing TF2 a few minutes ago. At what point does it start to burn out the card? =/
 
Like the title says, I have an 7800GT that has served me well for 2 years until now. I just noticed a sudden drop in framerate while playing TF2 that happens after 5-10 minutes of playtime. I downloaded a temperature monitor and low and behold I'm sitting at 88 degrees celsius. This just randomly happened last night, and the only thing that changed was I upgraded my Hard Drive, which shouldn't matter, I would think. Anyway, what do I do about this? The fan on the cooler isn't broken or anything, as far as I can tell.

Get a can of air, and blow out the heatsink on the video card to see if its dirty. Thats one of the first things you should do.
 
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