My video card is overheating badly. Can it be saved?

I own a PNY Verto GeForce 9600GT video card. It is well past the RMA deadline and so I've effected some "home repairs" to alleviate a buzzing fan. I opened it, cleaned out the burned-up factory grease, and lubed it up with white lithium grease.



Now, when the card runs, it sits at idle and heats up at a constant rate to the 130C shutdown point. Underclocking it by about 200mHz in each category brings it to a (relatively) stable temp of 75-80C. These temperatures are achieved at idle (sitting there with nothing but NVidia Monitor open) and begin at around 56C by the time Windows has started up completely.



Right now, I'm eyeballing the thermal paste on the GPU itself. This has dried out completely and seems like it's really not doing a whole lot. Theoretically speaking, does applying new thermal paste to the chipset of a video card have a significant thermal effect or is my hardware just plain borked?|||hi mate

sorry to hear your cards experiencing problems however this is probally down to the thermal compound used,however if it makes you fell better the same thing happened to me a few years ago with a geforce 7900gs,the stock fan was beginning to sound like concorde so i purchased a BLUV Vortexx NEO VGA Cooler made by akasa.....big mistake,,,,

i managed to fit it ok but the tempertures were never the same....and i used the thermal paste that was supplied with the vga cooler which is were the problem began in my opinion

themal paste is a bit of a enigma as most of us buy the cheapest or one recommended by a website however thermal compound may be the difference between a cool gpu/cpu or a overheated graphics card and cpu

the first thing to do is remove your current thermal paste with some isopropyl alcohol..this is the best way to completely remove all the paste and use some kitchen towel to dry any excess

then you need to apply some of the best thermal paste there is..... and this is "Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound"( http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduc… ) ....this is the best compound you can buy and used by all the top enthusiasts and overclockers,and the 3.5g tube will be more than enough for many re-applications

when applying thermal paste use a flat peice of plastic( a old credit card is great ) and smooth the compound over the gpu ...then affix the gpu cooler as directed by the manufactuer...

when PNY made the 9800gt the thermal paste was probally applied by a machine and this would of lasted forvever,however the minute you removed the stock cooler some of the original grease would of come off,,,

as long as you apply some decent thermal grease theres no reason why your card shouldnt work,also i recommend this gpu cooler ( http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduc… )

any problems let me know

good luck mate !|||Absolutely brilliant! Tube of AS5 showed up yesterday, slapped it on the GPU and chipset and voila, idle temp of *51C* and a load temp (playing Mass Effect and City of Heroes full blast) of 75C. This stuff is seriously magical. o_O Thank you again for your advice!

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|||Heres a link to a whole page of cooling solutions you can purchase new on newegg.com



http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLis…



Some are just fans, other are fans and heatsinks.



Should be faily easy to replace your current cooling solution with another.



If you take the heatsink off the GPU or replace it with another, be sure to use new thermal paste.|||You can replace the fan...just go to EBAY and search for a fan for it or consider replacing the card...at todays prices you can get something far better.