high temps after upgrade

Hey guys I upgraded my gt240m to a 5850m and the temps I've been getting don't seem to be what they should

I ran furmark to see if my temps would be around what others were.. in 5 mins my temps went from

38-38.5-35 to 80-94-82.5

And my fan speeds are set to no lower than 3k idle and at 70c it kicks to max cause I am worried about these temps.

Any suggestions this is on a fresh paste of Arctic silver 5

I used about a pea sized ball of paste for the repasting

 

Have you removed the heatsink after the first seating to check how good the core contact is? If there's an equal sized spot on the heatsink it should be ok, but if not, you'd either need to add more paste or lower the heatsink distance to the core.
How many heatpipes does your heatsink have? I don't know about alienware, but I know that for my laptop there are also heatsinks with only 2 pipes instead of three.

When applying the paste, did you spread it out to make sure it covers the entire die? If not, use either a razor blade or a credit card and make sure you do. Bare dies are not like IHS dies, you need to make sure they're fully covered. Using just a pea sized ball of paste and hoping that the heatsink will spread it out will not work.

 

Ok i will check right now, but its not the core so much thats really hot its the memory check the pic.

 

Alright, cleaned and repasted following your advice. (btw only 2 heat pipes) now the core is cooler but the memory io now wont hit 80 without shutting down my computer... its being really strange, no warning just poof off.

edit:update

here are my temps after playing fc3 on high settings for 20 mins

 

Just a heads up, the MemIO is part of the core, not the temp for the memory chips.

Sounds like a contact issue still, how did the contact look when you checked it? There shouldn't be too much paste in the "square" imprint if it's good.

 

I'll take a pic in just a moment and you will be able to see it looks like its getting good contact with the entire die but who knows

 

ya its either a contact issue or may need to do a good paste job. Also, how are your thermal pads? Just as a reference point, i've never seen over 80c on my 5850m even with an overclock (that too on dirty thermal pads, which i'm in the process of swapping out).

 

copper shimms would fix this

 

This could actually be the solution, give it a try with some copper shimms.

 

It seems as time goes by nvidia and amd shave small amounts of height from their package and over a long time cause this sort of issue.

 

Just on the topic, could anyone suggest which cards run the coolest?
I've read that the 7970m is 100W and runs hotter than the 670m (70W). No idea about 660m which is probably more in my budget.
Also 675m or 6990m? Best value for money and runs cool are priorities. My budget is probably only $200.

Thanks