4870 running way too hot. XFX tech support agrees.

[tuesday0180]

Hi Guys,

I received my 4870 yesterday. I've been running my games on it and it's a big improvement over my previous 9500gt graphic wise.

The only thing is it's running real hot. It idles at 69-70celsius and under load it jumps up to 98celsius. If I have the fan up to 75% speed and the side panel opens, the temperature drops to 96 celsius.

I emailed XFX tech support and they agree that 98celsius under load is a bit hot.

I checked the fans and they're on securely. I have four fans in my computer. The power supply ran, the fan on the CPU, the rear fan and the fan on the 4870.

My system specs are
E5200 dual core 2.5gigs
4gigs ram
Windows Vista 32bit.
Thermaltake Purepower 600watt PSU.

Is this natural? I know people say this card runs hot, but is it supposed to be 98celsius hot? I'm not overclocking, it's on standard clock speeds.

 

[ubernoobie]

ask the xfx tech support for exchange for a different version of the 4870, some versions of the 4870 from xfx have this messed up fan than blows almost no air

 

[hunter315]

Go to the XFX site, register you card, then call them up and see about an RMA under their lifetime warranty because what that implies to me is something went awry with the cooler. If it were a powercolor or something with a crappy warranty i would say take the cooler off, apply new paste and see if that fixes it, but with XFX's warranty and support call and see if they will take an RMA because if they dont it will soon need to be returned for warranty replacement anyway from the heat.

 

[tuesday0180]

Oh crap. I just bought the card yesterday from New Egg. SHould I just return it to newegg? Will they take it back based on what the xfx tech told me? i'm a bit disappointed by it since it was just purchased.

 

[hunter315]

Newegg usually has a pretty good return policy and will likely take a return for replacement since that is obviously not behaving properly. A bad one happens once in a while even to the best, dont get too discouraged yet, just make use of that XFX warranty if you need to.

 

[tuesday0180]

Okay cool I'll have to call newegg tomorrow to get an rma. Are they going to charge me shipping and handling to return a defective product?

On a side note, I just opened my side panel to my case and upped the fan to 56%. It's real noisy, but my load temperature dropped to 88 celsius. Is this abnormal too?

 

[tuesday0180]

Okay guys I RMA"d my card and Newegg received it.

I'm currently back ot using my previous card nvidia 9500gt. I'm doing some testing on this card and it looks like my HD4870 really was defective. It wasn't just an airflow issue(although opening the case helped it).

For example: with my nvidia 9500GT it idles at around 43c with the case open and 45c with the case closed. That 1 celsius difference is nothing.

When it came to my HD4870 it was idling at 70 with the case closed and around 65c with the case open.

This leads me to believe the card really was defective? Does this sound reasonable?

 

[Guest]

I was having the same problem with a 4870. It was idling at 88 C and maxing out over 110 C before shutdown. The solution was to:

1) Add new compound between the chip and heatsink.
2) Blow out dust out of all the vents of the fan system.

Now it idles at 57 C and maxes out in the 80s.

When I took it apart, the compound was all dried out and the fan and vents were partially blocked by some dust.