Question GTX 970 overheating issue

Apr 9, 2019
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Hello,

Since a few days, I'm experiencing overheating issue on my GC. Theses are causing temperature to ramp up and then got blackscreen, I have to reboot to recover it, it only happens in games.

My configuration :
  • Graphic card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. Cooling fans : Zotac, 2x fans.
  • CPU : Intel i5-6500 (3.2Ghz)
  • Power unit : 500W
Config is ~3Y old

Here's the timeline and a few important points :
  • I usually play games that my GC can handle easily (Overwatch, Apex, TW3 & so)
  • Few days ago I started to play Far Cry 5, after a few hours, here the trouble begins, fans starts being noisy but didn't paid attention, I first noticed black screens (twice in 2-3h whereas I never had before)
  • I then though that my drivers were outdated, did updated them and cleanup the inside of my pc (first with cottons buds & dry cleaning wipes)
  • I restarted and noticed that temp is still ramping up, I cannot play anymore games I played easily before. PC smells like "hot air"
  • Today, I cleaned up again, this time with dry air spray, not much improvement. My pc however is clean as it never was :)
Here's so far my diagnosis :
  • I first noticed that one of the two fans wasn't running. After a quick check, it is due to fan management from the GC that turns them only when required.
  • I installed Open Hardware Monitor (OHM) to check temp & fan RPM but it seems broken, it displays for one of the fans 0 RPM whereas it is spinning (not very fast though)
  • I tried Afterburner and force them to 100% all I have in OHM is : Fan1 = 119 RPM (100%), Fan 2 = 1762 RPM (100%) which is obviously wrong.
However, I noticed that a few times, Fan1 went to 100% around 1000 RPM but didn't stayed and goes then down to 200RPM
The thing is that in OHM, I always have Fan0 being "low speed", whereas visually, I can tell that sometimes, fan1 is slower than fan2, sometimes it's the opposite, there's no consistency
  • When I force them to go to 100%, I hear some "clicks" after a few moment when launching a game.
  • When I try to launch a game which ran smoothly before, temperature ramps up to 90°C but the fans doesn't start spinning faster. If I let the speed in "auto" in Afterburner that it increases gradually but have no impact on the visual speed. Temperature stays around 50°C when idle
1/ Are my GC fans out of order ? Even if I can see both running 100% but not altogether ?
2/ Can it be a power issue ? Ie faulty connectivity that leads the computer not to be able to deliver the whole power to have fans running at 100% ?
3/ Can a temperature / tachymetric sensor be faulty ? That could lead to wrong calculations in fan speed for temperature adjustments.

EDIT : While posting this (looong :D ) post, I let fans to 100% in Afterburner, OHM tells me that they're around 1700-1800RPM it seems that (visually) they're really at this speed now, at least way faster than usual speed. Temperature however still peaked at 90-95°C during a game

=> Why should I kind of "warm up" my fans so they can run at full speed ?

Many thanks for your help !
 
Last edited:
Apr 9, 2019
2
0
10
Hi guys,

Sorry for the delay.
Power unit is a Corsair CX500 and GC is 3 years old

Regarding changing the thermal paste, I tried but radiator & gc were completely sticked together due to adhesive thermal pads. Tried to force a bit but didn't went further as I feared to take the glued components off the card.

I don't know what to think ... yesterday worked fine with fans at 1500 RPM but today seems not to be working, stuck around 200RPM ... I suspect the fan controller being out of order. Guess it's time to buy a new GC ! :)