Graphics card crashes, but only in one game.

[Mateusz_Zboj]

Hey so I was thinking if removing the pads will be better than leaving the bad ones.
Or will I have to buy some vRAM heatsinks?

BTW: Now the thing crashes everywhere as soon as I hit 70ish degrees on the core and leave it for a while.

[Glorthan]

1. Ensure clocks are at reference. Perhaps someone was overzealous and the memory clock is too high. Easy fix if so.
2. Clean and repaste it. 10 minute job.
3. Buy a new card.

Sometimes hardware just fails, 8 years is a reasonable service life for a graphics card.

[MagicManICT]

For the price of decent thermal interfacing material, you can usually get a decent used GPU that is as good as what you're using if we're talking an 8 year old graphics card.

edit: First step is to clean it good. Get a good static-free electronics vacuum. They're usually handheld and battery operated similar to an upholstery brush on your household vacuum, but with much longer bristles. You'd be surprised how much dust can accumulate over time that compressed air won't blow out.

[Mateusz_Zboj]

I removed the dust. It still keeps crashing on high temps, so I guess I will have to keep the fan locked on 100%.

[MagicManICT]

Speaking of clocking, you could try underclocking the card. That should help bring temps down at a minimal cost in performance.

[Mateusz_Zboj]

Yeah I do that. Minimal decrease though.
Thinking back after reapplying the paste for second time I recall good chunk of GPU having dry spots with no paste on it. Can I have some paste spill outside of the core? Or will it kill it? I think my new paste is electro-conductive.

[Glorthan]

Yeah I do that. Minimal decrease though.
Thinking back after reapplying the paste for second time I recall good chunk of GPU having dry spots with no paste on it. Can I have some paste spill outside of the core? Or will it kill it? I think my new paste is electro-conductive.

How much did you put? Most people put too much.

Should be fairly obvious which part of the heatsink is supposed to connect. If you're still overheating with the correct amount of paste it really boils the overheating cause down to a faulty fan or possibly hardware failure.

[Mateusz_Zboj]

Like really little I flattened the stuff with spreader then removed some with paintbrush.
Also I have a refference version of this card which apparently has very shitty design if I noticed correctly.
Basically the air has nowhere to flow away except for small exhaust port which is also used for fan power cable.
I wonder if cutting off some of the plastic would improve it.