Over 1y old, time 4 a repaste?

Got a nvlddmkm.sys (nvidia driver) related BSOD on SC2 (settings on Ultra) yesterday.
Was a bit surprised, first time it occured since i bought it and i play demanding games on max settings every day for the past year (lets say im a "gaming enthusiast").
After purging the driver completly an reinstalling (just to be sure), i ran furmark and got some quite high temps (at least i think they are high, if i remember correctly they maxed at 74° on vantage when i bought it).
I also tried SC2 with GPUZ, but couldnt stress it extensivly due to time issues (but i could repeat it if you wish).
Pictures are attached.

Is it time to repaste the GPU? or are those normal temps? i couldnt find a good comparsion for gtx260m heat, so i would like to know yours.

 

furmark will always cause much higher temps than anything real-world
if you reached 74*C on vantage, do not be surprised to see 80+ on furmark

i would say the first thing to do is give the fans a blow out with some compressed air. just hold the fans lightly with your thumb/finger as you do so, it's better to not let it spin while cleaning since it can create a current.

you'd be surprised at how much dust can build up between the fans and the heatsinks.

if you are going to replace the paste as well, make sure to get the good stuff
mx-4 and ocz-freeze are both easy to obtain, easy to use and offer great performance.

oh don't forget to clean the goop left before with some arctic-clean or isopropyl alcohol. (can never spell that right without checking google)

 

Thanks for the reply.
I just dusted the cooling parts off (about two weeks ago).

Im really just looking for some conclusive numbers, the net says anything from "over 80°C is too high" to "your fine under 100°C".
So i went here to get some temps from fellow m15x (gtx260m) users, the best would be someone with a recently repasted GPU and freshly cleaned Vents who could run the standard furmark Burn-in for max 6min and tell me their temp ( not Overclocked ofc).

I think i should post my temps for those who dont like screenshots:
- SC2 got me to 89°C on a very crowded map at ultra settings
- Furmark temps went to 95°C today, the Temp-Curve seemed to stagnate at 100°C, but i was scared to let it go higher (screenshot attached).

I hope someone still has his/her m15x to help me out.

 

With those temps I would say you should repaste. Just did a fan-clean and a repaste with mx-4.

According to HWinfo64 I got a drop on cpu of 5-15 celcius warying on the different diodes or what they are called.
My Gpu dropped between 5-20 degrees aswell.
These temps were all measured during the performance test of 3dmark11

 

Repaste. When I had the 260m my temps never went over 70 degrees playing Starcraft 2 on Ultra settings.. I think the highest temps I got were in the mid 60's.

FYI, Starcraft 2 doesn't seem to be an overly GPU intensive game.. with my 6970m there is a difference of around 10degrees in max temps between playing SC2 and The Witcher 2, for example.

 

Thanks for your reply, i will look where to get that mx-4 cheap.

Yes, SC2 may not be use the full workload of a 6970m, but if i switch to Extreme settings, i get below 20fps sometimes, so its definetly pushing an old gtx260m to its limits already.
But thanks for the excelent comparsion Temps, that was exactly what i was looking for! Means i should definetly get that repaste done. +Rep for helping an IT-Student out

 

SC2 extreme has no difference from ultra unless you play campaign? Or am I wrong? Havnt played for months, so they might have changed it in a patch

 

Extreme Applys SSAO on the Cinematics and those neat story mode sets, so you are right. But i like the campaign a lot, so it is used by me
Also, i tried forced Antialiasing and forced SSAO in the nvidia driver, wich isnt a standard feature of SC2. But its unplayable^^

 

sc2 actually had an issue in which it was overheating graphics cards. i believe it has been patched now but if you're playing the single player/challenges and havn't checked for updates in a long time you may not have this patch.

Normen, i'd say anything above the mid 80's is a bit of a warning sign that maintenance needs to happen soon. anything in the 90's means it should be cleaned/pasted now. heading upto the 100's means it should have happened last week.

if cleaning the fans did not help then yes i would repaste, try mx4 as suggested above (if you can't find that then ocz-freeze is another decent one), ensure you have isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs to clean the left over paste.

 

Yeah SC2 had a problem of not limiting fps. Essentially, your card would blast off to 300-400 fps and the game would let it go unchecked.

Scary .

 

As an IT Student i keep everything uptodate, at least 1 day after patch releases, and not just for windows (but a dualboot windows/linux is the most convenient way to play the newest trippleA directx games).

My tube of mx-4 is already shipped, so im gonna report back as soon as i apply it.

Thanks for still contributing to this thread, but everything is fine for now.
I am sure it is just an aging issue of the old pastejob, over 1 year should probably be the maximum lifespan.

 

SO, my mx-4 arrived today (together with some cleaning fluids).

So i applied it a few hours ago and i have to say, the old repaste was a MESS.
The moment i removed the CPU Heatsink it was like:SUDDENLY, THERMAL COMPOND. THERMAL COMPOUND EVERYWHERE.
The GPU was much better.
Also, it was REALY time consuming to clean everything, especially the parts under this orange plastic layer around the chips(i belive some non conductive sheet to hinder shortcurcuits from the heatsinkmetal).
But whatever, after about 1hour of screwing cleaning and reapplying like a boss, it was done. Theres even enough compound+dissolver+isopropyl left to do this on maybe 2 more machines (i got the small 4g pack).

Im gonna run some tests now, but idles on gpu already dropped by ~9°C

 

I told you it would work wonders

Did you clean out your fans and grills while you were in there?

 

I did, but there wasnt realy anything to clean out because i did use some compressed air and a vacuum just 3 weeks ago.

And here are the results:

Before:
View attachment 68240

After:


Looks like the MaxTemps dropped about 20°C, if you consider that i canceled the "before" test early and they could would have went even higher.

 

Thats awesome man

 

glad to hear it
the mx4 paste is non conductive/capacitive so the plastic isn't necessary.
i removed the plastic you mentioned since i've been pasting cpu's for years now and after a while you get the hang of how much you actually need.

it's great stuff.
congrats with your results, looks pretty successful under 80 with furmark running for quite a few minutes. games in general would be much less. just keep the fans clean every month or so and things should be sweet.

 

That's a result! Nice one