How hot should my GPU run?

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 07-27-2007, 16:24

My Radeon 1900 was overheating the other day - turns out there was a wall of dust covering it's air intake.

Cleaned it out and gave it a spin (playing the World in Conflict beta). It didn't crash, but it got up to 70 C. That's really hot, right? Even for going all out...

I'm thinking of water cooling the darn thing but I'm not sure how and I'm worried I'd just drown my PC...

Edit: Managed to reach 80 C...

**_Martyr_** · 07-28-2007, 06:53

70 is quite normal for a modern GPU under continuous full load, 80 is on the high side but still nothing to be worried about. If it goes far above that I'd start to be concerned but at those temps I wouldn't worry! However, do keep an eye on it, and make sure it stays dust free. A sure sign your GPU is overheating is if you start to notice artifacts in games, these are usually pretty obvious.

**Lemur** · 07-28-2007, 06:54

I have a 1900-series card as well, and I opted for the $19.99 solution. Cooler, and more importantly, quieter.

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 07-28-2007, 17:25

Lemur, did your 1900 come with an onboard fan and housing? Mine does, so I'd have to remove it to install the cooling thing on the card...

**Lemur** · 07-28-2007, 17:39

Yup, you gotta take off the cooler to upgrade it. If you're not comfortable with that procedure, you can always get your local hardware geek to do it for you.

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 07-28-2007, 17:51

Questioning my geek credentials!?

I'll look into it. Thanks for the link.

**TosaInu** · 07-31-2007, 09:59

Hello,

70 is still safe, but of course you want it to be cooler. When it overheats, it can also freeze your 3D game after playing a few minutes. I blamed it on (a) software bug(s) when it happened to me, but it turned out that the GPU hit 90 degrees Celsius and more.

Installing a new cooler didn't turn out to be that difficult. Hardest for me was to remove the push pins that attached the old cooler. It never passed 65 degrees after (6600 is a hot chip) and ran quieter for ~$20.