4870x2 Temps increasing over time

Hi there!

Problem: I have a HIS Radeon 4870x2 and I'm seeing all tempratures (idle/load) slowly increase over the last few months.

When I bought it (fan 40%):
Idle Load
GPU 1 50C 80+

Now:
GPU 1 63C 90+

Case temp used to be about 27C (I have two case fans intake+exhaust), now once I start gaming the case temp maxes at about 38C. Room temp is about 18-20C.

Load temp breaks 90C now, with the fan running at 40%. I used to just leave it at 40% but lately I need to go 50-55% before launching a game to keep things in the 80's or under.

I have cleaned the dust off the fan blades as best I can, I'm getting a small paint brush today and will try again tonight, but I cant tell if there is a build up of fluff within the ducting on the graphics card itself, the card looks clean, cant see any fluff caught in the exhaust grill.

So my questions are, is it worth completley dismantling the heatsink/fan assembly to clean it out? Are these temps nothing to worry about, should I leave well enough alone? Is it worth looking at fitting a 3rd party cooler? I repair computer hardware so I'm reasonably technical if thats required.

Any help appreciated!

I7 920 @ 3.4Ghz
Zalman CNPS9900NT CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R
Crucial 8GB DDR3 @ 1333Mhz
HIS Radeon 4870x2 1GB
Creative X-fi Xtreme music

Temps might have increased because room temps have increased.
Earlier it was winter now summer.

Though I won't worry about those temps.Just crank up the fan speed while gaming.

As long as the temperatures aren't excessively high, you shouldn't worry about it. The best you can do is clean as much dust as possible or increasing the fan speed. If you feel confident in dismantling the heatsink/fan on the GPUs, then applying new thermal paste on the GPUs certainly will help. But with the temps you're getting right now, you shouldn't worry about it too much. Dual-GPU cards are never temperature friendly.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I might take a look at re-applying the paste when I have some time, if it looks easy enough to dismantle I will go for it, but its nice to know I can carry on using it for the moment.

Regarding the memory, two of the memory slots count as one channel on this board so even though its got four slots filled its still triple channel, at least according to Gigabyte, I have never confirmed that with software. So when I was getting an I7 rather than buy new RAM I just reused the RAM from my last system.

Thanks coozie7, I think I will give that a whirl on my next day off. Playing Just cause2 last night and temps were over 90 degrees with the fan on 55% and I'm sitting in an attic with snow on the roof.

Thanks again everyone!

You can download a free program called CPU-Z (google it) and it'll tell you what channel your memory is running in. Just go to the Memory tab.

Good luck with your 4870x2.