Very hot temperature of RADEON HD 6950

[Oh Besnik]

I need urgent help here to deal with overheating of gpu. My friend called me last week to configure a gpu. It is RADEON HD 6950. I fixed it and it worked well. Then again he called me and said that the pc is getting restarted on its own and some it does not turn on at all. When I checked I found that the gpu is heating a lot. I downloaded a GPU temperature monitor and that showed me temperature between 70 to 80C every time. Is this temperature normal or it is quiet high. I checked in my system which has a nVidia gpu. The temperature in that lies between 35 to 45C when I play games.

So it looks that RADEON HD 6950 is getting too hot. What should I do now to get this fix.

[Kshaunish]

It can be due to the PSU. You didn't mentioned complete detail on your system. If the psu is below 700w then I think your gpu is getting hot due to lower power. Your system will shutdown automatically if the temperature crosses the limit. Try to add a good fan and then check. The current fan in gpu looks not capable of cooling your card.

[Algernon]

You have to test some different things here. First add a cpu temperature monitor also. Check that it is heating or not. If it is then there is some issue with your system configuration. Overheating cause when there is no proper air ventilation, when there is lack of thermal paste, when there is low power supply or when there is some application which is highly resource intensive. To some extent the hardware is also responsible.

If still your cpu heats up carry the same to your nearest service center and tell them that it heats to this much degree. The gpu must lie normal below 50C whenever you use it. At room temperature this is simply overheating and cause major failure. Check the connection properly. Change the card slot and ensure that you had fixed it. The PCI slot can also have the same issue. Check in bios that your cpu fans work at reasonable rate to draw the heat out.

[Aaron007]

Yes changing the fan I think can fix the issue. I hope you can try out some different methods in that. If you can post here the full system information what all you have, then it would be easier to help you out. There are number of reasons behind gpu overheating.

[McKayla]

Why don't you try to have a Liquid cooler in your system. Liquid cooling is another most reliable solution to avoid overheating. It is recommended both for cpu and gpu. There is are no straight points available on web which can tell you why actually a GPU overheats. The top solution that you will find on various forums is using a liquid cooling. If possible try to test the gpu on a different system. Connect it and play games for sometime.

If still the same issue arises then this is straight hardware fault. Another important thing which is mentioned above is adding a good amount of psu. A number of time the temperature till 70C is considered as normal. But this is only applicable if your system does not reboot. The system looks a low on power supply. Add a good gpu in your system. Atleast 700w or higher, this will remove the issue of overheating.

[Florence_USA]

Yes it is right. RADEON HD 6950 is good graphic card and on low psu the system will heat up very soon. This will also put affect on the other hardware. You must not ignore this warning. Also there are chances to manual configure the fan from performance tab of Catalyst control center.

[Osman84]

Increasing gpu fan will do nothing. Because as the gpu will heatup the fan will demand for more power. You can easily face lagging, reboot issue. This is a serious issue and do not ignore the same. You can start with small. Turn on your system and then wait for sometime. Add a gpu monitor and check what temperature it maintains. Is it rising on idle or stay at aspect ratio. Then simply run a game in window mode. If you notice the difference then this is clearly a psu issue.

The maximum troubleshooting stuff you can do here is update drivers and firmware. But that is not going to help much. Second try to keep the left panel of your cpu case open. I hope you have enough cooling at your home. Many gpu works comfortably between 60 to 70C. That is the normal temperature and when the work is over the gpu cools down through fan support. This is entirely a automated process. But when gpu cross the limit of heat it is turned off on its own to avoid any major damage to system component.

[Maq.H]

Liquid cooling is not a cheaper solution but very effective. For those system who deal with overheating issue, liquid cooling provides more cooling. But for that also you have to increase your psu as it works on certain component that needs power to operate. Whenever you add a gpu do not forget to check the power requirement.

[Yesenia]

Carry the card to service center. I hope you are not overclocking your gpu which cause such heating issue. As the card is new it is still under warranty and it will help you a lot in fixing different issue. You must not at all play with other settings. Adding a additional fan to your cpu case can be option but that is not helpful to much extent.

But if you try to add a thermal paste by opening up the gpu, it will void warranty. Whatever you are doing, do not open up the card completely. It is better if you show it to the repair center and they will check out. If it is a hardware fault then you will get the replacement on the same instantly.

[Chakradev]

It is right. I applied a heat-sink on my ati radeon gpu which lost my warranty. But luckily the card is working. I hope this will not go down before the warranty period. You must show the same to service center to get right fix.