- Nov 21, 2010
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My good ol' GTX570 Power Edition has gotten pretty noisy lately. I checked the temps and it was idling at ~50 with the fans spinning up to 2000RPM. Really got on my nerves, so I popped in an Asus GTX560 Ti DCII that I keep as a spare. Phew, peace and quiet.
I then looked at my MSI. Not that much dust, but I blasted it with compressed air anyway. Then I got this idea to replace the TIM. Removed the heatsink and didin't like what I saw - the TIM has turned into something like chewing gum. Got pissed off - the card is barely a year old. Anyway, got my acetone and cotton wipes out and cleaned the mess. A drop of Arctic MX-4 and a good press to distribute the paste later and I was ready to pop the card back in. Just for extra measure I switched the fan profile to quiet mode (there's a little switch on the side of the card). Fire everything up - idles at ~40 with the fans spinning at 1300RPM. Can't hear anything over the hard drives. So far so good. Fire up some games - no more than 65 degrees. OK, the final frontier - GPU crunching. Fire up F@H and it heats up to 75 degrees. Used to be this hot with loud fan profile.
What I learned from this - they cut corners even on high end cards.
I then looked at my MSI. Not that much dust, but I blasted it with compressed air anyway. Then I got this idea to replace the TIM. Removed the heatsink and didin't like what I saw - the TIM has turned into something like chewing gum. Got pissed off - the card is barely a year old. Anyway, got my acetone and cotton wipes out and cleaned the mess. A drop of Arctic MX-4 and a good press to distribute the paste later and I was ready to pop the card back in. Just for extra measure I switched the fan profile to quiet mode (there's a little switch on the side of the card). Fire everything up - idles at ~40 with the fans spinning at 1300RPM. Can't hear anything over the hard drives. So far so good. Fire up some games - no more than 65 degrees. OK, the final frontier - GPU crunching. Fire up F@H and it heats up to 75 degrees. Used to be this hot with loud fan profile.
What I learned from this - they cut corners even on high end cards.
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