I got an overheating problem, I'm not sure if it's because game requirements have gone up, or my card thermal compound gone bad. Maybe a little bit of both. I got an Antec Twelve Hundred case, and after I cleaned it from all the fine dust, card as well, with my little compressor, I knowticed temps rising. Also when I come back from a game, the GPU's cool very slow compared to what is was when I bought it. I bumbed into a problem with the case. It has too much air outtake fans. I thought that maybe it's a airflow thing, so turned up every fan to max. That leaded to the case creating so much negative pressure inside that the card wasn't able to push any air out. That been done, I put all three Air-In fans to max and others to min, and it helped out a bit, though not much. So I added another 200mm fan to the empty slot on the sidepanel. Fan blows straight to the card and that also helped a bit. But since it's taking so long for temps to drop without stress to the card, I've been thinking that maybe the connection is not as good as it was new, and thinking of opening the card and chancing thermal paste to both GPU's. It's an "x2" card, so there's two GPUs (4870x2 = 2x1Gb mem, 2GPU) in each card, and a turbine-like fan blowing through them. Fan also makes turbine like sound at anything over 55% speed, noisy enough to effect gameplay and runs at 70-80%, temps at 85C when I play WoW, or other new games with 1x antialiasing and high settings. I've downcored the card from CCC Overclocking program to keep the temps in around 80-85C as low as I can. If I put it to normal and raise the graphics to ultra, framerate is fine but card runs at 95C and fanspeed is over 75-80% constantly. What do you think, should I open the card up and try to change paste? Is it as simple as chancing CPU paste? I've never opened a graphics card, although I've always build up my own computer myself, so I'm no stranger on how to apply paste to CPU. Only thing I'm concerned is that I haven't opened any graphics cards ever, and there's two cores. Does that make it more difficult to change thermal paste? I got one tube of Arctic Silver 5 for the "operation". It didn't come any specific instructions. With some paste I've heard you have to wait ~24hours for it to spread, should I do the same with Arctic Silver 5 since it seems to have a very high viscosity? Any other tips and notes about what I'm about to do are very much appreciated. Generally I'd just want to know is there anything unusual to consider. I'm planning to apply new paste only go GPU's, and leave the memory like it was. So, tips would be nice, and if u happen to got some pictures (or good links) of radeon 2x series card opened, that would be awesome. HERE is a link to the EXACT match of my card Thx in advance, and happy new year to everyone EDIT: The card is not OC:ed. It's worth while letting u know though that about a week before I started paying attention of the rising fan speeds, I did run through CCC:s "Auto-Tune". Could this have "fried" the old thermal paste? I don't know what the temps were during auto-tune since it does it's graphics tests, but fan was going at 100% for sure for the sound of it, and took over half an hour before it was done.. Also Idle-speeds was about 30% when I bought this and core temp around 60C, now 25% when I bought this, now while typing this, 36% fan speed and 90C core temp. :-/
Could this have "fried" the old thermal paste? maybe, if it sucked. one chip or two its about the same, i think. ive heard a negative pressure is desirable for computer cases; less stagnant air that doesent move. i could be mistaken. artic silver is good, and if you decide to do the operation, i think it probly does need some time to do its thing, you could probably use the card pretty soon after application, just not for games until a day or few has passed. thats all the advice i can give, good luck dude update: also, i tried to change TIM on a motherboard and accidentally ripped off a motherboard component, so be ginger if you remove the shroud. dont just jerk it off suddenly
About negative pressure, if the case is pretty much airtight and all the holes are covered with dust filters, there really was that much down pressure that when I tried the venting hole in the back of the card with my hand I didn't feel but a glow of warmth, usually it really literally blows hot air outside when the fan is at 100% and temps around 90c.. Airflow is case sensitive of course, but this is the case with Antec Twelve Hundred. Addind a 120mm sidefan really did help, good thing there's a slot for it in the panel. Also one thing might be a small factor; I've heard that Antec fan quality isn't that good. Mine have deteriorated for sure. The computer is 1½ years old and on 24/7. The dust filters add resistance to airflow. Every time I clean the dust filters, the fans make extra sounds for a day or two before "settling in".. probably bad bearings so I'm planning to change those three 200mm front intake fans to something high airflow-low noise, similar to that side fan I added. Even had a 2year quarantee, cost around 18€. About airflow out, I don't know how to see downpressure for a graphics card anything but a bad thing. When you pump air in, it's going to flow out naturally. When the outlets are designed well there's no need for so many fans as with Antec case. I don't think you need a 200mm fan on top, 2x120mm on back since there's already one 200mm on PSU and the turbine fan in graphics card would be enough on it's own with one fan on top of the case to guide air out from cpu (in my opinion). Overpressure though, would help the card pretty well I think.
