4870x2 problem? urgent help

[physichull]

Hello, when I first got my 4870x2 I had no problems with it. It would happily sit with fan speed set to 35% and cruise around 48 degress. It seems to have got a lot worse over the last few weeks where now one core idles at 65 degrees with fan speed at 50%, the other at 48degrees. This I can tolerate.

What I can't tolerate is that when its put on load, this temperature rapidly shoots up to 95 degrees and this by just going through the menu screens on Cod4!!! The auto cooling kicks in and whacks the fan speed up and cools it to 90degrees, and thus the cycle continues.

Is my card just set up wrong? Also (noob question) does running dual monitors affect my card performance? Any advice to lower the temperatures would be greatly appreciated as I am quite worried about it thanks.

 

[physichull]

Now its idling at around 70 degrees.....help!

 

[physichull]

Blown all the dust out and everything. Still at 50% fan speed im getting 60 degrees and I dont want to put the fan any quicker as its quite loud!

 

[physichull]

Its an Antec 900 case and all the fans are working and it seems fairly cool air coming out. Also why is one GPU considerably hotter than the other?

 

[physichull]

Ok, I've just had a go on Cod4, activity hovers around 40% and the temps climb all the way too 100 degrees and the fan switches to 90%. It never used to do this yet its got slowly worse since I bought it.

 

[physichull]

There doesnt seem to be a lot of air flow coming out of the back of the card (out the back of the pc when the cables plug in), and the flow rate doesn't noticably change with fan speed. could that be clogged? I assumed the air was merely blown onto the GPU and didn't realise it vented out the back too. Is that right?

 

[physichull]

Hmmm it may well be the heat sinks. There doesn't appear to be much air flowing out of the back at all to be honest although on looking at the face of it and shining a torch in, there doesnt appear to be a lot. Does anyone have any advice for taking the cover off the back etc? Just dont wanna unscrew things only to have bits "fall out" and me not know where they go back etc, things like that.

I am useless with computers, apologies for noobness. The pics you show fo the heat sinks looks like what I can see through the vent out the back (cant see much). that one is the heat sink near the gpu furthest away from the fans, which gets hottest. Maybe the dust has clogged the one near the fan preventing air flowing through the second heat sink and out the back? Hence why I cant feel much air venting out the back?

Can anyone else feel much airflow through the vent? Also, I can feel a lot of air coming from the fan, seemingly blowing away from the gpu. This seems to indicate that there may be a dust clog near the heat sink near the fan......hmmmmm.....

 

[physichull]

I would suggest opening up the card and cleaning out the heatsinks. ATI use comically small heatsinks on the x2, so even a mild dust build-up will cause things to get toasty.

I shall try this. Will I need to reapply the thermal paste?

 

[physichull]

Situation worse now. Now hovers at 75 degrees with fan at 50%. Installed the latest drivers, have taken the card out to look for dust and it didnt look that bad from the outside and I really am not comfortable enough to take the back off. I think a phonecall to OCUK may be in order for some help.

 

[physichull]

Right then, I can now happily report that I went to buy a can of compressed air and cleaned my graphics card fan and blew it into the back vent, a fair bit (but not a lot) of dust flew out and now its back down to 40 degrees on idle with fan speed at 40% which is fine!

Its all about the dust. Its amazing how only a little bit of dust can affect it by 35 degrees! Couldn't believe it when I opened up Catalyst again.

 

[physichull]

All advice appreciated thanks. Feel a bit stupid now as it was only a bit of dust. Playing Coh and Cod4 and it barely gets about 60 now so I'm happy.

 

[physichull]

I suppose the lesson learnt really is that such a small amount of dust can make such a difference.

(It also helps when you plug the cables back in after cleaning and dont forget like I did).