5850 Idle Temperatures

[aznpwned]

I am currently running two mismatched 5850s in crossfire.

The one I am most concerned about is the Sapphire 5850 Game Edition, it idles at around 50C while my newer Visiontek 5850 idles at around 36-40C.

Their Furmark temperatures are as follows.

Sapphire 5850 Game Edition: 82C
VisionTek 5850: 69C

These temperatures are at 70% fan speed.

The Sapphire 5850 is underneath the Visiontek one

Is there anything I can do to lower the temperature?

 

[wiinippongamer]

Take out the heatsking and use canned air to blow all the dust particles away from the heatsink fins, then clean the old thermal paste with isopropyl alcohol then apply some new paste and mount the heatsink back in.

You probably won't have to remove to take out the whole heatsink and reapply paste if you can just remove the plastic shroud, then blow the dust away, it can't be done on the refernce card but not sure about later versions.

 

[aznpwned]

I have already tried this, temperatures didn't really drop. However, I'm not sure if I properly reapplied the thermal paste, how much or how little should I put onto the GPU?

The heatsink is clean.

 

[wiinippongamer]

Bare die require alot less thermal paste than a CPU heatspreader, here the rice grain then slap it on method won't work, you need an almost transparent layer of thermal paste spread evenly across the die, put a small pea in the middle of it then smooth it out with a clean credit card or one sided razor and remove all the excess paste, then carefully put the heatsink back in, also make sure you clean the old paste well, try to remove all the leftovers.

 

[aznpwned]

Best answer selected by aznpwned.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey