Crashing after cleaning and new thermal paste

[redwinter]

I decided to clean up and repaste my GTX295 after a lengthy disassembly. I caned air out the fan and used rubbing alcohol to clean away the old thermal paste, and put some generic Dynex brand thermal compound on and re-secured both gpu's back to the block. Gave it a ounce over and put it back in my rig. I checked the temps and I droped a good 10c, leveling out at about 84c on bc2. But after about an hour of play I hard crash, not BSOD, but image frozen and sound looping, with no backing out. This has happend twice on bc2 and once on Crysis 2. I want to know what might have gone wrong and/or what the next steps I should take to remedy this problem. For clarification I would reach 105c on crysis without crash previously, crazy yes I know. Thanks in advance -Red

 

[Griffolion]

That's a strange error indeed. If possible completely wipe away the drivers using Driver Sweeper and re-install the latest ones fresh and see what happens.

Does the hard crash occur in a low power state (I.E on the desktop) or is it always in games?

 

[omac1a]

I decided to clean up and repaste my GTX295 after a lengthy disassembly. I caned air out the fan and used rubbing alcohol to clean away the old thermal paste, and put some generic Dynex brand thermal compound on and re-secured both gpu's back to the block. Gave it a ounce over and put it back in my rig. I checked the temps and I droped a good 10c, leveling out at about 84c on bc2. But after about an hour of play I hard crash, not BSOD, but image frozen and sound looping, with no backing out. This has happend twice on bc2 and once on Crysis 2. I want to know what might have gone wrong and/or what the next steps I should take to remedy this problem. For clarification I would reach 105c on crysis without crash previously, crazy yes I know. Thanks in advance -Red

First off, you shouldn't have used Dynex branded anything. That is Best Buy's house brand. It's probably crap.

Secondly, thermal paste is conductive, and you may have gotten some on the board itself which may be causing problems. At this point throw out the Dynex branded stuff and get Arctic Silver or some other known brand and redo the card. Check to see if any got squeezed out on the board.

My bet is too much thermal paste is causing the problem.

 

[redwinter]

Makes sence, ill clean up the card first and see if any got on board.