Maximum PC

Just as the subject says. When gaming it will shoot upwards of 105 C and crash the system. I've had the card (ATI 4850) for over two years now, I'm suspecting it is just burning out? I attempted to clean out the fan as best I could but it doesn't seem to have helped at all. I can still game if I get a stationary box fan and place it up against my case but that is loud and obnoxious (and only keeps the rig at about 85 C while gaming). Any advice? Speedfan doesn't seem to have helped any and I really can't afford to buy a new card anytime soon. Any help is appreciated. Thanks


James

you need to completely take the cooler apart. remove it, and take the cover off, and get rid of the dust bunnies. re-assemble the card, applying new TIM to the GPU (the pads can stay on the RAM).





Ted

By TIM I'm assuming you mean thermal padding? I've never messed with a video card but I assume it can't be that difficult to take apart. I'll see what I can do, do most just take a standard screw driver or do I need one of those extra small sets? Appreciate the advice.


James

What brand of video card? Some of them come with a lifetime warranty (if you registered them). You may not have to go through the hassel.

In regards to "TIM", Tedster's referring to thermal paste such as IC Diamond. It will be applied using very similar methods to installing the heatsink to a CPU.

It's an MSI, but I didn't register it or anything when I bought it so I'm assuming it isn't covered under any type of warranty. I'll just have to get some thermal paste and see what I can do. Thanks guys.


James

I had a sapphire 4850 (single slot version, very thin, and crappy cooler, also heatsink not real copper, its aluminum painted) not too long ago, and was getting pretty much the same temps. I tried taking it apart and reapplying AS5 on it, it helped a little, but the thermal pads just didn't do their job on the ram as well after this.

I found a great deal on an accelero s1 rev2, $25 shipped. After installing that cooler, the card was 80C at load, and that was with no fan, just passive cooling overclocked too.

The accelero was great since it came with arctic cooling's own thermal paste already spread in just the right place. I didn't have any problems with the ram sinks not sticking as some people have, but I did clean the ram chips real good before attempting to stick the ram sinks on. The PWM sinks that came w/ the cooler were crap though (i think PWM chips just had too little surface area to stick), and I ended up sawing the PWM section off the stock cooler (which just happened to have both screw down holes on it). The PWM sinks that came w/ the accelero actually turned out to be just perfect for the PWM on my motherboard... go figure.

just found this sale
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?p=F ... 9b9b66a600

Appreciate you looking into it man. I took it apart, rather nasty. There was a lot more shit inside there than I expected to find. Those ATI plastic coverings are just a dust nightmare. Anyway now that I cleaned it out it's running at 80 C under loads. Much better than before. If I have anymore problems if the future I'll defiantly look into another heat sink solution cause the stock one on this card is pretty garbage. Thanks again for the help guys.


James

I have/had a Sapphire 4870 and it always ran warm - idled between 68-70 but under load it usually did fine. From what I hear about the 48xx cards this was typical across the board for baseline (non OC'd) models.

4850's are hot, but not that hot. Try an RMA. That's not what you expected and they should work with you. If you pull anything apart and try to fix it yourself, only two companies of the plethora have honored my RMA's after doing that. Visiontek and XFX.

A 4850's heatsink is just a couple screws and not a nightmare...RMA it before you're too deep.

What does a process like that entail? I've never dealt with MSI. I took the card apart and its running a lot better, but I just removed the heat sink and cleaned out the dust I don't think I violated anything.

Just as an aside here, you did thoroughly clean off the old thermal paste and apply a good quality new paste, right?

You can find wierd things in a HSF. I recently found a char-grilled moth inside one of my GTX 280's (sorry no pic).

80 C under load sounds about right.





Ted

Yeah I've found dead spiders complete with populated web in some old laptops.

I think that's overkill for a working card - 80C after a cleaning is not something to worry about. IIRC, 4850's came with a single-slot cooler, too. Not bad if so.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835118037 I installed one of those on my 4850 & haven't looked back, max temps never go over 60C while gaming with card overclocked to 790MHz core speed. Before the cooler swap, the card would run mid 60's at idle and with the card underclocked to 600MHz core speed.