Reasons For High GPU Temp?

System is running *really* slow past few days.

Installed SpeedFan and took a look.

I am assuming:

- SpeedFan's "GPU" temp is the temp of the CPU

- The 60C shown for "GPU" temp is way high.

That being the case, I removed the heat sink - which didn't look
very dusty - and cleaned it thoroughly.

The thermal transfer paste looked kind of sickly, so I went to
Radio Shack and bought some new paste. Went for the cheaper
white stuff at $3.50 instead of the $12.00 silver on the
assumption that marketing was at work there.

Scraped both sides clean, applied the new paste, re-fastened the
heat sink... and no change. GPU still at 60C.

Eyeballed the heat sink fan and it is working. SpeedFan says
it's turning at about 1,400 RPM. Fan's 2-5 in SpeedFan's list
are all at zero RPM... but looking into the box, I don't see any
other fans on the mobo.

Temps of the two internal hard drives are in the low thirties.
Temp of a hard drive in a SATA sled is 29.

So

- Are my assumptions correct?

- Did I make a mistake by chincing out on the thermal
transfer paste?

- Might there be other reasons for the high CPU temp?

System is running *really* slow past few days.

Installed SpeedFan and took a look.

I am assuming:

- SpeedFan's "GPU" temp is the temp of the CPU

- The 60C shown for "GPU" temp is way high.


That being the case, I removed the heat sink - which didn't look
very dusty - and cleaned it thoroughly.

The thermal transfer paste looked kind of sickly, so I went to
Radio Shack and bought some new paste. Went for the cheaper
white stuff at $3.50 instead of the $12.00 silver on the
assumption that marketing was at work there.

Scraped both sides clean, applied the new paste, re-fastened the
heat sink... and no change. GPU still at 60C.

Eyeballed the heat sink fan and it is working. SpeedFan says
it's turning at about 1,400 RPM. Fan's 2-5 in SpeedFan's list
are all at zero RPM... but looking into the box, I don't see any
other fans on the mobo.

Temps of the two internal hard drives are in the low thirties.
Temp of a hard drive in a SATA sled is 29.

So

- Are my assumptions correct?

- Did I make a mistake by chincing out on the thermal
transfer paste?

- Might there be other reasons for the high CPU temp?

I assume it's an Nvidia GPU, you never mentioned. When I had those GPU's
typically did run in the 50's and 60's, or even 70's sometimes. My
Radeon is currently "idling" at 45C.

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message news:

System is running *really* slow past few days.

Installed SpeedFan and took a look.

I am assuming:

- SpeedFan's "GPU" temp is the temp of the CPU

- The 60C shown for "GPU" temp is way high.


That being the case, I removed the heat sink - which didn't look
very dusty - and cleaned it thoroughly.

The thermal transfer paste looked kind of sickly, so I went to
Radio Shack and bought some new paste. Went for the cheaper
white stuff at $3.50 instead of the $12.00 silver on the
assumption that marketing was at work there.

Scraped both sides clean, applied the new paste, re-fastened the
heat sink... and no change. GPU still at 60C.

Eyeballed the heat sink fan and it is working. SpeedFan says
it's turning at about 1,400 RPM. Fan's 2-5 in SpeedFan's list
are all at zero RPM... but looking into the box, I don't see any
other fans on the mobo.

Temps of the two internal hard drives are in the low thirties.
Temp of a hard drive in a SATA sled is 29.

So

- Are my assumptions correct?

- Did I make a mistake by chincing out on the thermal
transfer paste?

- Might there be other reasons for the high CPU temp?

The white paste is OK; I've used it for quite some time from 386 CPU's through multi-core AMD's with no problem (and
I've never seen the miraculous cooling difference claimed by Arctic Silver). Remember that a thin coat is much better
than a thick one- it's meant to smooth over imperfections between the base of the sink and the chip, not act as a
blanket :-)
More important is the case air flow. If the heat is removed from the CPU/GPU, but there isn't decent flow though the
case to let it out, it's not going to cool very well. If you have a spare 80MM or similar sized fan, set it up
temporarily to pull air away from where the air exits your video card heatsink, and leave the side off the case if
possible, and see if that makes a difference.

Per Yousuf Khan:

I assume it's an Nvidia GPU, you never mentioned. When I had those GPU's
typically did run in the 50's and 60's, or even 70's sometimes. My
Radeon is currently "idling" at 45C.

Thanks.

FWIW, my slow response problems (which I was jumping to cause on
with the temp thing) were resolved when I re-imaged to a known
good image.

In the past week or so, I've installed/uninstalled a half-dozen
video transcoders (in search of one to purchase) and I suspect
the sys picked up some bad actors during those installs.
Pete Cresswell