Windows 7: Graphics Card Overheating

Just to mention first, I am not overclocking my video card.



I've been having an issue in the past few weeks with my video card overheating. At first it was overheating whenever I run any game for an hour or more. These games are not beyond my computer's capabilities because I have been able to run them with no problems in the past for many hours at a time. I narrowed it down to the most recent driver being screwy, so I rolled back.

Now, while it doesn't overheat if I'm playing, it WILL overheat if I'm idled on the main/title screen, while I'm away. No matter what game it is, or however low the graphics are set or are natively, my card will shoot up in temperature after only a few minutes of idling on the title screens.

Example: I was playing Empire: Total War for about an hour and a half, with my card topping out at about 65-70 C. When I left for half an hour, I exited back to the title screen, which is not at all graphic intensive. I come back and the temperature is reading 105 C.

I'd like to know how to solve this issue, since it's only become an issue recently (RIGHT after the warranty ended....). I just find it weird that I can play something graphic intensive just fine, but I can't idle on a low graphics screen.

I'm using a nVidia Geforce 9500 GT 512 MB 128-bit for reference and I'm checking the temperatures with SpeedFan. If you need to know anything else about my computer, let me know.

Assuming it has a fan on it, have you pulled the card out to make sure it isn't clogged with dust?

I also use RivaTuner and use that to manually bump up the fan speeds by having custom profiles for each card.

It does have a fan and I cleaned out the fan already with no change. Does bumping up the fan speed cause any bad effects? Also, why would it overhea while idling?

If you recently updated your driver to the 275.xx, that will do it.

Well it was causing issues but the version it is now dates back to last year since I rolled it back.

The one most of us nVIDIA-ers use is 270.61 WHQL. Also running your GFX fan a little higher won't harm anything. It will just be noisier and collect dust faster.

My friend has this problem with his NVIDIA 8400GS, i hope you find an answer to your problem and perhaps i can address my friends problem by learning something from this thread.

All the best.

As for the overheating at idle, check your cables for looseness and make sure the GFX card is firmly seated in its slot. You might remove/replace it to be sure. Don't forget the latch on the end of it.

As an update, I've cleaned up the fan (again), made sure everything was firmly secured, got the recommended driver (270. something, I think, I forget exactly). The driver cools down faster now, but only when not in use. For example, I can exit a game when it's running at, say, 90 C, and it'll drop to 60 C within 5 minutes. However, it's still overheating while idling, reaching 105+ C and then shutting down my computer.