Hi guys, firstly let me say hello! my first post here after a long while from just reading and mooching around! =]

I have a 'problem' my my graphics card, or so i think anyway, the card is a X1950 Pro 512mb PCI-e.
the only thing around computers i have never fully understood is overclocking and heat. however my PC is not overclocked and everything is using the stock cooler and settings.

After about a 2 hours of playing world of warcraft using 1680x1050 resolution on most settings on high within WoW i checked my heat monitor that i had running behind the game (CPUID hardware monitor) and it shown my card to be running at 88c/190f. ive not usually seem the card go over 80c under full load.

So my question is this;

Is that normal and to be expected?
Im slightly paranoid about things overheating in my PC, as i work within the gaming industry and need my graphics cards to work correctly and not melt.

Thanks for your time!

Have you cleaned the cooler? It could be that dust is your issue.

^ +1

Clean the dust out of that thing.

Hi!

Thanks for the quick reply, i never actually thought about the dust lol..i shall get onto cleaning that right away.

Is there a certain way to get the dust out or graphic cards/processor coolers? im slightly worried if i just blow into the fan while holding it still (PC turned off of course lol) the dust will go into other places and cause a bigger problem.

I have a can of compressed air somewhere, hopefully a quick shot of that would do the trick?

Thanks~!

I usually remove the GPU from the computer to clean it that is the only way you make sure you get every thing.

If that card hasn't been taken out for a while dust would be a problem. Take it out, use canned air or blow hard and put it back in. Even if temps don't go down that much, they are still reasonable for GPUs.
Good Luck!

Thanks for the help everyone.
i just took the GPU out and got a tonn of dust out. did the PSU and CPU as well why i was at it.

The temp on the card has dropped a little, it now hits 85c under full load.

I think one of the reasons it may be getting hot is becuase i have Vsync turned off ingame which is giving me 80+fps on average which is possibly making the card work more for very little noticable visual improvement.

I turned vsync on and its now running at the refresh rate of my LCD (60 fps average) this took the temp down to around 79-82c.

Thanks for the help!

oh come on, my 7300GT got to 110c but then again that was the time the fan melted and got stuck. Now at load my 7300GT reaches 78c and thats with 2 monitors. But that temps rather normal with gfx cards

i hope you changed the fan on it!

Harry,

Which X1950 Pro do you have in your system, exactly?

I had a Diamond 512 version, and I had the exact same problems while playing WoW. When you cleaned your card, did you unscrew the plastic faceplate and remove it from the rest of the Fansink assembly? The reason I ask is that the first time I cleaned it, I only got a portion of the dustbunnies out because I didn't remove the faceplate - I just pulled what I could out of the intakes facing the fan blades. My temps only improved very slightly, just as yours did.

Once I took the plate off, and gave it a FULL cleaning, my temps dropped about 30 degrees. I never had problems with that card again.

Just a thought.

ffs.... *bangs head*

Hi, yeah i took whole sink off the PCB board, and gave it a good clean. i dont think i got 100% of the dust out, but i would say i got the majority of it.

Im not 100% sure of the version/model of the card all i can tell you is that its the '512mb pci-e' version lol


And lol at metlted fan XD