260 Cooling Solution

**hokie64** · November 28th, 2009, 01:14 PM

My 260 has been running strong for a while now, but with modern warfare 2 sessions, it starts to freeze after a while.

I grabbed a temp monitoring program, my temps seemed high. A little tweaked seemed to show the fan pegged at 40% duty max. I upped it to 100 all the time, and it it still fairly quiet.

However, I am seeing mid to high 80's C during gaming sessions (wasn't logging it before when it was crashing). Is this too high? I idle around 50C- normal?

I was also looking for aftermarket heatsinks for it, but I can't seem to find anything that says it is specifically compatible with the 260. Are the majority of cooling solutions just going to be compatible, or is there something strange about this card?

**RacerX** · November 28th, 2009, 02:17 PM

Is it running stable with the fan up at 100% ?

i did a custom bios on mine, i OC'd it to 725/1512 and 1215 and it runs very cool. i did drop my voltage quite a bit to 1.06 from 1.15 and adjusted the fan to reach full ramp up by 70 deg instead of 100 deg which is default.

if tweaking the bios isn't for you, you can use one of the tweak programs to crank the fan up during play, or try the aftermarket route.

after 5 minutes of furmark, 1920x1200 16x extreme burn mode, it stays about 70 deg, at 100% fan. not too bad.

as for aftermarket, thermalright makes one,
Thermalright HR-03

there may be others.
some have modded the cover and added 2 92mm fans.

just remember with pretty much any aftermarket solution, the heat is going out the back like it did, so have good airflow in the case so you don't heat everything else up trying to cool the card down.

**hokie64** · November 28th, 2009, 03:54 PM

After some testing, it hasn't crashed, but it reached 100C. That sounds bad. Fan is at 100%, should I look into a new heatsink?

**KarmaKiller** · November 28th, 2009, 04:47 PM

100c is pretty hot for that card. You probably don't need a new HSF though. You could probably just replace the thermal paste and you'd probably see a huge drops in temps. The stuff out of the factories is pretty crappy IMO.
I noticed a 15c drop on my GX2 when I reapplied new/better paste.
Also might take a can of air to the heatsink, and see if you can get some of the dust/dirt/etc out of it. That would probably make a world of difference.

If none of that works, then I'd say check out the airflow in your case. Lots of times that's one of the biggest factors in GPU's overheating.

Good luck!

**RacerX** · November 29th, 2009, 01:47 PM

Agree with KK, 100 is way too hot at 100%
some cards do get bad thermal paste jobs, sounds like time to follow the above options.
your idle seems high too, as i type my idle sits around 40C (using real temp)

without any video card utilities running for fan control or anything, what does GPUz show as your idle speeds?
should be around 300/100/600.

**hokie64** · November 29th, 2009, 11:47 PM

GPUz did show my idle speeds drop, and pick back up when I started 3d programs.

I am unfortunately on business for the rest of the week, so no more testing.

Is the thermal paste the same thing I use on my processor, or are there differences for whatever reason? I still have some arctic silver from my last build.

**KarmaKiller** · November 30th, 2009, 12:15 AM

Arctic Silver would work fine. You'll see the difference right away when you remove the HSF from the PCB. The stuff they use looks like clay, and is super hard. You pretty much have to gently scrape the stuff off and then clean with alcohol from there.
It'll make a world of difference.