Do modern video cards automatically shut off when overheating?

[vj8usa]

What would happen if my video card's fan suddenly stopped working, but I wasn't around to turn my system off? Does the card detect that it's overheating and turn itself off? Or does it just keep running until the heat damages it to the point that it no longer functions properly?

P.S. - my card has a "dumb" (2 wire) fan, so it wouldn't be able to detect that the fan stopped spinning.

 

[RallyMaster]

Most of them throttle down but you will have the occasional few that will just go pop without warning.

 

[ViRGE]

To be frank, I'm not even sure a card being able to detect a dead fan would be of help. I don't believe there are any cards/GPUs that can throttle themselves down/shut-off like a CPU can, so I'm not sure a device would be able to save itself. Am I wrong here?

 

[wwswimming]

i have a 3870. the fan goes off & on. as i type this, i can see the
fan blades - 0 rpm.

 

[Specop 007]

I've had the PC lock up as well as just flat out crash due to heat, but never fried a component. I dont know if you could physically ruin a component from heat without actually removing the heatsinks. But from a fan failure? I dunno..... I dont think the heat would build up fast enough to fry anything.

 

[Fox5]

A video card is mostly idle when not running a 3d app, so it may be able to throttle down enough to run passively for 2d/Aero mode.
BTW, you can get fan replacements.

 

[ChristianSol]

I can tell you what happened when my ASUS gtx280 reached 115 Celcius while playing World in conflict. I had manually set the fanspeed in 100% in smartdoctor.

I played with earphones when I noticed kind of ingame lagging. I removed the earphones,
and noticed the soundlevel from the pc /card was changed.

Ok...in SmartDoc the fan was 0%, indicator showed 115 celsius, so did the GPU-Z log I had running in the background.

I had too reboot windows to get the fan working again, temp raised to about 80 celsius on idle with 0% fan before I rebooted.

The GPU Z log showed temp clearly raising from app. 90-95 degrees, while gaming and fan was working, and then in seconds up to 115, down to 110, up to 115 down to 108 celsius before I turned pc off, and rebooted.

From The GPU Z log I could see the MHz of the proscessor was downed a few steps. I can post log if anybody like to see it.

Card worked normally as I could see after reboot, also fan manually set in SmartDoc. I do belive i checked the "enable overheat protection" in smartDoc. I think smartDoc has a bug Issue, related to the fan stopping all suddenly, but I don\t know.

Crysis gave me BSOD after a few minutes, overheting I guess - also on on air. Temps while playing 100% fan enabled at 100 - 105 (!) celsius.

When on water, with a EK Fullblock, Temps raised slowly to 90 deg. C, and also over 100 in hefty ingame graphic. Temps quickly downed to 38-37 idle, 30-40 seconds after end gaming. App 20 deg. C in room. I use a Feser triple Rad and only cooling card in the loop.

The card is now returned to the shop, to let them test it out due to overheat. Hope to get a new one.......