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[Solved] Buzzing noises at Windows startups and games are crashing.

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by Willie, Feb 1, 2013.

  1. You may be lucky and only need to clean the graphics card. You could go as far as re-applying the thermal coundpound to help with cooling, yes that would cost money and you would need to watch a few youtube videos to get the idea of what to do properly but it could be the least expensive option (or it could do absoluetly nothing).

    Does your gfx card look really dusty under the fan or anything? Is your gfx card still under warranty? I see that evga gives that card a 2 year limited warranty so it's possible it could still be covered depeneding on when you bought it. If your card is still under warranty then don't do any cleaning or thermal paste applying, just get it sent off.
     
  2. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    I talked to a friend about my computer issues yesterday and he mentioned that the thermal compound paste has probably dried up because I built my computer 3 1/2 years ago. Just watched a couple of videos and it doesn't seem difficult to apply it so I'm going to buy this. Hopefully that product will fix my problem.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX-8cC3PNg4[/youtube]

    Recently I discovered my graphics card fan was a lot dustier than I realized but cleaning the fan didn't seem to help with the crashing problem at all. As for the warranty, it expired over a year ago.
     
  3. If you haven't already ordered anything then I would personally recommend this product Here

    Also what does this program report your gpu temps as, both idle and running a game?
     
  4. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    Unfortunately, I ordered one shortly after making my post but the one I ordered got solid reviews so I'm not concerned about the quality of the product.

    Dunno yet. I'll try running that next time I play a graphically intensive game. Though I usually play games in full screen mode so it might be difficult for me to check that program while in-game.
     
  5. Yeah that Arctic Silver 5 will work fine, there isn't much of a difference between all of the good ones like you said. If it gets good reviews then that's what matters.

    BTW you could push "Alt + Tab" to switch out of the full-screen game to check the temperature program. I did some looking and found that your gfx card should idle at anywhere around 40 degrees Celsius and gets as hot as 75 C *normally*. I wouldn't doubt it though if yours is getting much hotter
     
  6. TmEE

    TmEE

    Master of OPL3-SA2/3 Tech Member
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    BE careful with arctic silver as it has some conductivity at high freqs and putting it too much on a chip die will result it spreading to the few components around the die and that can cause instability issues. I have seen several GFX cards and laptops that no longer work because of it (until you wash it off and apply sane amount of the paste). You don't need a lot.
     
  7. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    It has an average rating of 5/5 on Amazon with over 40 reviews so I probably have nothing to worry about.

    Noted. I'll keep this in mind next time I play a game.

    I plan to apply very little paste and follow the instructions in the video I posted.
     
  8. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    My computer is fixed. By replacing the thermal compound paste and getting rid of a ton of dust from my graphics card, my computer works better than it has in quite awhile. To test my graphics card, I just played six levels and two boss battles in Sonic Generations as Modern Sonic. It ran at 60 FPS around 90% of the time and the game didn't crash. :D Makes me wonder if I should open up and clean some of my other computer components. I'll post pictures later of what my graphics card looked like before I cleaned its insides. It looked absolutely disgusting and there was very little paste protecting the golden shiny thing in my card. Thank you acrazyplayer and one of my rl friends for mentioning the possibility of my thermal compound paste being dried up. I didn't even know about that stuff until you guys mentioned it.
     
  9. It's no problem at all and I'm glad you got it all fixed for only a small amount of money.

    congratulations!
     
  10. Willie

    Willie

    Each day the world turns Laugh 'til it all burns Member
    The fan replacement cost me around $7 and the paste cost me around $8, so I only spent around $15-16 to repair my computer and it's probably in a better state than it has been in years. Not bad, especially since I can't imagine how all of this would've cost if I had a professional try to fix my PC issues. Oh, and rubbing alcohol to help clean my graphics cost cost me $1.07.