Video Card Running Poorly? Clean Your Video Card Cooler!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,409 words · ~7 min read
0:00
here at Linus media group we believe in cleanliness which
0:05
okay so you guys weren't gonna believe that fine so sometimes our stuff gets
0:09
dirty and when it does we always clean it up right away which
0:14
okay you weren't gonna buy that either were you okay well how about this one
0:18
when our graphics cards get so caked up with dust and gunk that gaming
0:23
performance and cooling suffers or they get louder we finally break out the
0:28
cleaning supplies to restore them to their original glory you still with me
0:32
alright so let's do that then
0:44
Intel's new 750 series ssds utilized the NVMe standard providing speeds never
0:49
seen before on consumer storage drives click
0:53
right here to learn more
0:58
so let's start by introducing our graphics cards i actually wanted to find
1:02
ones that were a little bit dirtier than this but my cry for filthy graphics
1:07
cards on twitter didn't yield any results that were any better than the
1:10
two old bitcoin mining cards that taryn had at his house so i went with those of
1:15
the two the 5870 with the rear exhaust cooler seemed like the better bet to
1:20
demonstrate the usefulness of cleaning out a graphics card since its design
1:24
causes there to be a small difficult to access potential bottleneck inside the
1:29
shroud that can essentially prevent air from getting through the heatsink
1:34
by contrast the 6870 has a very open
1:37
cooler design that is both difficult to gunk up and easy to access for cleaning
1:42
so for step one we need to get a baseline reading of how the card is
1:47
doing so we're going to throw on the latest drivers and use a gamer
1:51
application that puts a predictable load on the graphics card so i used the
1:55
skyboxing crisis 3 right here and then
1:58
using MSI afterburner i was able to load up the key performance metrics for this
2:03
test on screen GPU temperature and fan
2:07
speed percentage so we ended up with values of 74 degrees at 39 percent fan
2:12
speed at max step two is going to be to take the card
2:17
off and then add a safe clutter free static free workstation or at least
2:22
outside begin the cleaning process now the easiest fastest way to clean out a
2:28
card is to use a duster can like this and blow out the areas you can reach
2:33
make sure you hold the fan still so that it doesn't over spin because that'll
2:36
burn out the header it's attached to and don't turn the can upside down
2:40
because that's going to blow residue junk all over your card which could
2:44
potentially harm it in the long term with that done we can throw it back on
2:49
the bench and find out if that actually
2:52
did anything all right so our duster can didn't make
2:55
a lick of difference with peaks of 74 degrees and 39 percent fan speed so that
3:01
means one of two things either the card
3:04
is clean enough as it is and required no cleaning in spite of its grungy outward
3:09
appearance or number two we weren't able
3:12
to get enough dust and hair yes hair is a major concern for pet owners out to
3:17
make a difference so it's time to step up our game remove the card from the
3:22
bench again and this time you'll need a tool kit start by removing the screws
3:27
from the back of the card being careful to label them for when you inevitably
3:30
put it back together make sure when you're taking out the four screws
3:34
directly behind the GPU that you remove them in a cross pattern to avoid putting
3:39
extra pressure on one side of the fragile GPU die
3:43
some coolers also have screws in the rear pci cover that will prevent the
3:48
cooler from being removed so watch out for those
3:51
with the screws off you can pull the back plate off the card if applicable
3:55
then flip it over and pull the cooler off the front of the card then remove
4:00
the fan connector be careful not to lose
4:03
or dirty any of the thermal pads on the bottom of the heatsink during this step
4:08
you will need them for reassembly and they cannot be replaced with regular
4:12
thermal compound as you can see this
4:16
doesn't really give us any better access than we already had to the inside of the
4:20
cooler and it's at this point that the details of this how-to guide will differ
4:26
somewhat depending on which card you happen to have so the next step is to
4:31
disassemble the cooler itself by pulling out basically all the screws you can
4:35
find labeling them of course and then popping it apart to reveal the heatsink
4:40
fins that are usually attached to some kind of a solid copper or vapor chamber
4:45
base in modern cards we can see now that our card falls into
4:50
the former just not that dirty in spite of its outward appearance category of
4:54
cards whose cooling performance doesn't improve from being blown out but
4:59
since we're in here we might as well take another run with our blower can
5:03
anyway reassembling the card is as simple as
5:06
doing everything you just did in reverse with one addition make sure you put some
5:11
new thermal compound on the GPU just a little bit will do the trick
5:16
and then with the card reassembled we get our final results 73 degrees and 37
5:22
fan speed a marginal improvement to be
5:25
sure and one that's as likely to be to do with replacing the stock thermal
5:29
compound as removing those two baby dust bunnies that we did from our cooler but
5:34
that doesn't take anything away from the instructional value of this video so if
5:38
your GPU is running hotter than before try out this guide before you junk it
5:42
because especially more modern cards can
5:46
not only run cooler and last longer but can actually run faster thanks to clock
5:51
boosting technologies that activate only when the card is below a certain thermal
5:55
and acoustic threshold speaking of acoustic thresholds do you
6:00
hear that it sounds like
6:03
audible.com the leading provider of audio books with more than 180 000
6:08
downloadable titles across all types of literature including fiction non-fiction
6:13
both fiction and non-fiction wow that's basically everything oh and also
6:17
periodicals audio books are great to listen to when you're driving stuck in
6:21
traffic i guess that's also technically driving on the subway i guess that's
6:25
also technically traffic i've only actually told you two things just now
6:29
anyway don't worry too much about it doing chores around the house at the gym doing errands shopping or whatever and
6:34
for our audience members audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a
6:38
chance to try out their service actually it's available for everyone but if you
6:42
use our link then yeah we get credit for it if you're a
6:46
star wars fan and you can't wait for the new movie to come out you can listen to titles like lords of the sith written by
6:52
paul s kemp and narrated by jonathan davis and if you
6:56
aren't that into star wars then don't worry they have lots of other stuff too
7:01
loser so to download the audiobook of your choice for free visit audible.com
7:06
Linus and try out their membership it gives you an audio book every month to
7:10
listen to and entitles you to other perks like discounts on additional
7:13
audiobooks all right that's it thanks for watching
7:17
guys like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment preferably at the forum link in the
7:22
video description if you have comments also we linked in the video
7:26
description you can contribute to us if you like our videos and you want us to make more you can change your amazon
7:30
bookmarked one with our affiliate code if you know you want to buy a graphics
7:34
card and you want us to get a small kickback when you do that and as always
7:38
don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that good stuff thanks again for
7:42
watching