Graphics card artifacting

[asylace]

So I bought an RX 560 4GB PowerColor Red Dragon GPU on eBay used and everything was working perfectly fine. But after a few hours of gameplay, I start getting terrible artifacts and discoloration. Once I let everything calm down for an hour or so and get back to gaming (Paladins, Dragon's Dogma, Dead by Daylight) the artifacts stop until after a few hours of gameplay again. I don't know what could be causing this besides maybe a dying GPU? I checked the temps and with fans cranked to maximum (as I am playing games at 4K and doing so just fine with 40+ fps) the temperatures seem to stabilize around 75C-78C. When idle however, it is at 50C-53C and that is stupid hot for sitting idle. I was thinking that the card itself is just dying but it's a little hard for me to tell. Any opinions guys?

 

[stdragon]

It's the RAM on the video card; most likely overheating. This causes random bit-flips and that can manifest itself visually via the corruption of the frame buffer (right before it sends the image to the monitor)

 

[Eximo]

Well, since it is ebay, take the card apart and re-apply thermal compound. If you can actually confirm the VRAM is overheating, you can always add some additional heat sinks or thermal pads.

Though I must say forcing an RX560 to run 4K is a bit extreme. Certainly going to fill up the memory and run the GPU at 100% all the time. That would reveal any slight instability quite quickly.

A lot of newer cards now run in silent mode at idle, so they'll just passively dissipate as long as there is thermal room.

 

[asylace]

But how is that possible? I thought the safe limit for any GPU in this day and age was around 80+. I see videos from JayzTwoCents and BitWit all the time with GPUs hitting 85 sometimes and no artifacts or discoloration happen at all. How could it be temperatures? I'm not saying that it isn't that but more so curious and would really like to know.

 

[asylace]

And yeah you're right Eximo. I was going to look at the paste. I have some extra thermal goo sittin' around. If the pads were bad (needing replacement) what color would they be? I know that new pads are a thick blue color. I've never actually seen bad thermal pads. I also wanna say that I don't max everything out by any possible means. Usually low to mid settings at 4K and the card seems to be able to handle it fine.

 

[toshibitsu]

I've used these things before for VRAM chips(they work very good): https://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Copper-Cooling-Heatsinks-cooler/dp/B00637X42A

The alternative are these thermal pads: https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-ACTPD00002A-Thermal-Pad-1-0/dp/B00UYTTDO6/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1523390601&sr=1-3&keywords=thermal+pad
I've used these before also. Mainly on PS consoles, but they also work very well for M.2 SSD's that generate too much heat.

 

[TJ Hooker]

But how is that possible? I thought the safe limit for any GPU in this day and age was around 80+. I see videos from JayzTwoCents and BitWit all the time with GPUs hitting 85 sometimes and no artifacts or discoloration happen at all. How could it be temperatures? I'm not saying that it isn't that but more so curious and would really like to know.

The temperature you're reading is of the GPU core. Video cards don't typically have any thermal sensors for the VRAM. There's really no way to know the temperature of the VRAM chips short of attaching your own thermocouples or maybe using an IR thermometer.

I have no idea if your issue is VRAM temp, but you can't determine whether VRAM is overheating by looking at core temp.

 

[stdragon]

Well, there may be many reasons it ended up on E-Bay. It could have been pushed hard to mine Bitcoin and whatnot. Or, because someone else didn't want to deal with what otherwise is an intermittent issue. No telling for sure.

For cooling VRAM, looks like your card already has a giant HSF assembly over them. So at this point, replacing the thermal pads is the way to go; specifically if you see separation (air gap) between them and the HSF.

 

[asylace]

Alright. All of that makes sense. I bought some 120mm fans to throw into my system as I had no system fans until now (yeah I know, living on the edge) which could amount to heat build up throughout the entire case. But I'll look into everything suggested here. Thanks guys

 

[Eximo]

New thermal pads can be in pretty much any color. Blue is fairly common though, but there are also pink, brown, black, and the very common white thermal pads. The key is to find the right thickness, which usually means taking a card apart, finding some unsquished sections and comparing all the pad thicknesses to make sure you get all the right ones.

I've not bought too much, just some stuff from Arctic, the pads that come with my waterblocks (XSPC), and I did buy some high end fujipoly pads. They didn't not work, but only thorough testing could really show the differences.