How to make your GPU fan cooler?

I recently started playing Dawn of War II : Retribution beta and realised that the top left corner of the m17x was getting hot. I went to check on HWMonitor and was shocked to see in touched 80 degrees.

The last time I had this issue was a defective fan which touched that high playing Dawn of War II : Chaos Rising and started slowing down my gameplay and i had it replaced which was back in December 2009.

Should I be worried? It seems pretty soon that the GPU would reach this high again.

 

which gpu are you talking about?

 

My Geforce 260M GTX. It standardizes at 50 degrees now when I'm not playing.

 

I had 3 M17X R2 so far, and i always, always reach 90 - 94 degrees on my GPU, i think this is because my enviroment, if you are in a cold place shouldnt be that hot.

 

The tech who came by to replace my fan advised that most of the time when you're gaming, if it touches 80 degrees tops then you should be worried. Wouldn't 90-94 be something to be quite worried about?

I live in the UK currently but since I'm indoors I usually turn on the heater. But I don't recall my laptop being 50 degrees even when I'm not playing. I think it was usually around 30-40.

 

Yes, i always being worried, but what can i do?, the first machine have the same behaviour, the second machine the same, and now this, still the same, i also have a cooler (Cryo NZXT).
They changed the GPU 3 times in the very first machine, and always, always the same, by the way, my room temp is 32 - 33 degrees, and i have not air acconditioner; what i need is just extreme cooling solution.

 

I see so it's not exactly the laptop's fault then but more of the surrounding weather? I guess you would need to replace the GPU fan more if you are a heavy gamer and the fan wears out itself?

Edit : I have opened the windows in windy Newcastle and it is now 49 degrees in HWMonitor for my GPU but only for a short while before it went back to 50 degrees and stayed that way.

 

I have a r1 with 2 4870's and according the GPUz they never reached 60*c.. Its 70*f inside the house.

 

when playing Metro 2033 my primary card hits 108 Celsius max and the slave one hits 96-98.

Any other games don't make GPUs reach even 100 degrees. Crysis makes temps from 80 to 96..

 

On my R2 with xfire 5870 i reached 115 C the other day on both cards, measured in HWinfo32!! I haven't been able to reach those temps again, but 90-95 is reach in about 8-10 seconds.... Settled on the measure being a faulty reading...

My test environment consist of running BOINC:Collatz conjuncture and BOINC:Aquamark (CC uses all available CPU cores, Aquamark uses GPU's) To top it up i run Furmark multiGPU, witch seems to add 2-3 degrees extra.

CPU temps run at top 80 in this scenario as well.

/Ole

 

You see ?, even 50 degrees is such a good temp, even if you play games, i think 60 - 75 its ok, those cards can handle that, you have to consider many things, i am sick of replacing cards and always get the same result, yes, is not the card itself, its my weather conditions; look back at me and compare my temps with your temps, you will be glad and proud of not be me hahah!

 

There's nothing like a nice,fresh thermal paste on a clean GPU/CPU and assuring the heatsinks are dust free,this is a minimum to be done!

 

x2

anything over 90 is a short cut to death for the GPU

Not a problem if your under warranty, but otherwise your pocket book is going to get allot thinner

Replace your thermal paste with some quality stuff, and if your going to game a laptop cooler maybe a good investment as well

 

It took me 2x on my main vid card and 3x on my secondary but I finally got the temp results I was hoping for.

I used ICDiamond (I used to always use AS5 no questions... but this IC Diamond stuff is awesome).
Now, my main card does not go above 80-85C (even with volt mod and OC) and my slave goes a bit higher (85-90C) but this is when running furmark.

Normal gaming is lower (mid 70C).
I also replaced the thermal pads (on mem chips) with some higher quality thermal pads.

So... I would suggest investing some time and effort to doing the same if you are really worried about your temps.

D.

 

Thanks all for your suggestions.

Wow Cmagamez you were right. So many other people have higher temps than mine and I already got worried when it touched 80 xD

eitherway, i'll try what you guys said but i wondered whether it was just a normal occurrence if you were playing a game which demands more from your GPU and thus only natural if the temperature were that high.

So games like crysis could spike even more?

 

Crysis doesn't load my GPUs so much as Metro 2033 does

 

I will try to get ICDiamond, but i live at colombia, and is a pain in the . . . . get stuffs like this, also, i am really afraid to open my laptop, the worst part on the tear down is the touch indicator, it always, always get damaged, never fit as well as new, thats my main concern, cause without it, it could be a game of kids.

 

what katalin 2003 said! the heatsinks clog up fast...like three months! I use Shin Etsu X23. I get less than 60 deg with OC to 685 1669 1095mem.

 

Of course there's no change if you repaste but you don't clean the heatsinks!
Ensure a good airflow!

 

Make sure the inside of your system is clean and especially that the vents aren't clogged with dust.

Also repasting the GPU may help.

 

just a few easy things you can do;

open your machine up, and clean the dust from the heat-sink, (the thin blades, or vents where the air flows out)
while you are at it, you could replace the thermal paste
and last, the cooler-master U3 cooling pad (the best cooling pad for the M17x, as you can place the three fans under each heat-sink)

You can find many videos on youtube on how to open the M17x safely.

I would never tell anyone to use a can of air from outside the machine, as you will just be blowing the dust in side of it around. When the fans kick in, that dust will just go back to clogging up your "vents". If your goal is to clean the vents, open the machine up and dust away.

 

I second that.It's the lazy man's way of saying: "if i don't see it it's not there anymore!"

 

I'm very new to actually opening up the m17x and i've never actually heard of thermal paste but I'll take everyone's piece of advice. Guess I'll have to go out and buy some.

Any other tips or stuff that a newbie like me should know?

Edit : Bump