lpallard said:
Hi all!
I am experiencing a strange overheating problem with a Nvidia GT430 videocard in my htpc and cant figure out why...
Basically, the machine has been sitting unused in a storage room for about 5 months until I put it back in action tonight. Ive checked for dust inside the casing and inside the GPU/CPU fans, no dust (except maybe a slight film, nothing more).
Last time I used the machine (back in january 2012), it was working perfectly. Same hardware back then, nothing changed...
Tonight I started the machine and ran XBMC for about 10 minutes before the machine randomly rebooted.. Then back on the desktop, I tried to figure out what happened, to no avail.. Then I launched XBMC once more and sure enough, about 10 to 15 minutes later, Boom! it rebooted..
This time I suspected that the videocard was overheating, sure enough, launching the Nvidia control panel showed idle temperatures of 45-50C with fan speed at 65%, and temperatures steadily increasing up to 110C when XBMC is running.. Just running the glxgears (I am in Linux) makes the GPU go up to 60-65C...
This machine never overheated before. Like I said, no hardware change. The ambient temperature in the room is around 27C. The machine is sitting on the very same entertainment unit as it was before, therefore there are no air flow obstructions caused by lets say, books, a wall, etc...
Anybody could comment on this issue??
The only thing I am thinking is the thermal paste... It may have become bad but why?
I just bought a second-hand GT 430, installed it in a Dell Inspiron and began to play Second Life when the card overheated and quit, the computer screen went black, I felt the heat sink on the card, it was so hot I couldn't touch it it with my hand, I gave it a few minutes to cool down and fired it up again and found the fan was spinning very slow, although GPU-z reported it to be be spinning in the "Normal" RPM range. Having experience with fan bearings running out of lube and the fan either running slow or not at all, I got to work on removing the fan from the heat sink and peeled the labels of the fan looking for a rubber plug, customarily those fans have one serving as a bearing cover, there wasn't one, so I was able to get a couple of shots of WD-40 in between the fan and the housing, gave it a few preliminary spins manually, using my fingers, and it freed right up. Cleaned any excess WD-40 of the blades and housing and re-installed it in the heat sink and put it back in the machine. It's been running Second Life 24/7 for about 3 days now at between 60 and 70 degrees celcius. I used NVidia inspector to crank the fan up to 100%, but it sits at the 96% mark. Good enough for Me. From what I gather these fans seize up from sitting for any length of time.