I've had my Diamond X1950 Pro 512 AGP card for just over a year. In the last few weeks, I've been hearing a beep code while playing WOW for more than 20 minutes or so. Whenever I toggle back to the desktop, I see a dialog box that states "Your Graphics Adapter has reached unsafe temperatures"

I've downloaded ATI Tray tools, so I could keep tabs on my GPU temps, and after a good 20 minutes of playing WOW, the card is reporting temps of up to 108 Degrees Celsius. In my opinion, that's waaaay hotter than it should be running.

In ATI Tray Tools, and Riva Tuner, I've seet the fan speed to 100%, but it hasn't helped the temperatures at all during load. At this point, the card is sitting idle on the desktop at 61 degrees with no load at all. Oddly, all programs report the fan speed as being at 0 RPM, but I've opened my case, and seen the fan cranking away, for an absolute certainty - it IS running. The fan noise noticeably increased when I set the fan to 100%, so I don't know why it's reporting no function.

My first thought was that perhaps the Fansink had come loose, but all of the backplate screws seemed tight. Could the thermal interface material have corroded???

Anybody with some experience or advice - your insight will be most welcome.

Thanks in advance.

I'd bet the face of the fins (nearest the fan) is caked with dust and is getting no flow through the cooler. I've seen many laptops like this with a similar radial fan cooler where they start to overheat. Try a compressor with a trigger spray nozzle or a can of air duster (not as effective as the afore mentioned compressor).

You could always try to clean and reseat the cooler with new TIM. Use ArctiClean kit and Tuniq TX2 for best results.

Have you checked the inside of your video card fan for evil dust bunnies? That would be my first guess.

Edit: Kyle beat me to it!

Have you cleaned out the heatsink on the card? It could be clogged with dust.

Echo ... echo ... echo.

I'll be sure to try some canned air as soon as I can get my hands on some. Thanks for the advice so far. I'll be sure to post my results as soon as possible.

UPDATE: I removed the card and gave its fansink a thorough cleaning. KyleSTL had precisely the right of it. The face of the fins had a thin layer of dense film that prevented ANY air from reaching the GPU heatsink. After removal and cleaning, the card is back to its old thermal performance. With the fan set at 100%, played WoW for 3 hours and GPU temps never broke 63 degrees.

Thanks for the great advice, you guys.

Good to hear, enjoy the better-breathing computer.

The X1950 PRO AGP responds REALLY well to an aftermarket cooler. Zalman's Cu-900VF (or is it VF900-Cu?) really does the trick.