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How hot is too hot?

regulus

regulus

regulus

Soldato
Joined
18 Aug 2006
Posts
10,053
Location
ChCh, NZ
My new graphics card runs at around 75 celsius under load and overclocked. Is that too much, enough, can I push it a little further?
 
If it starts artefacting, then its too hot. Otherwise it's fine. There is no 'right' temperature, it depends on what the IC and packaging are designed to run it - which obviously varies from card to card.
 
Some of the olders cards, ran far hotter :)

A X1950XTX of mine goes to 90 on a hot day with a small overclock, this doesn't cause artifacting either :)
 
Good to know. I'll have to hold myself back with overclocking. I always want to go that one little step further :(
 
regulus said:
Good to know. I'll have to hold myself back with overclocking. I always want to go that one little step further :(
Click to expand...

with such cards these days if you want to overclock then the cooler needs replacing. Call it sinisism but its almost as though manufactures design the stock cooler so minimum overclock can be done hence prompting you to buy an aftermarket cooler to keep them in business !

:p
 
Hmm, just pushed the card a bit further, assulted it with Crysis on high settings and suddenly it max out at 67 Celcius.
 
I have the GPU clock running at 775MHZ and the Mem Clock running at 950MHZ
Folks with the 4870 1024MB, how far do you push your card?
 
powercolorpcshd4670512mqc5.jpg


Wanted a nice and quiet card so went for the PowerColor PCS HD4670. PCS is meant to stand for Professional Cooling system so I was a bit suprised when I checked the card in to tbe RiVatuner clinic and ran Furtest!



108°C load! . . . WTF!!!!!!!!! :eek:

Touched the card and nearly burnt off half my body, so far beyond scorching its not funny! :(

Took the card apart to see what was going on, huge big splodge of TIM?

powercolorpcshd4670512mjy3.jpg


powercolorpcshd4670512mpf2.jpg


Cleaned off the factory TIM with a shovel and carefully applied some fresh paste and did a test fit, when I held the card up I could see a faint chink of light shining through still when held up to the light . . .

powercolorpcshd4670512mkj9.jpg


Did a test fit and made sure there was plenty of pressure then took the card apart again and it seems the heatsink still wasn't making good contact with the GPU core!

powercolorpcshd4670512msx9.jpg


Seems to be almost a design flaw with the heatsink base, it should have a protrusion/embossed base that touchs the GPU but no? Had to apply a jam sandwich amount of TIM to fill the gap and get the card working again, I dunno! :confused:

Moral of the story is, not all cards have good heatsinks and not all cards have had the heatsinks TIM applied correctly!



78°C load after TIM redone!
 
Last edited:
This card is sweet. Running Crysis maxed out, 1600 x 1200 at 40FPS constant. I might Crossfire it when prices comes down.
 
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