my rx 480 8gb is overheating

[starspazattack]

ive had my rx 480 for a while now and its been running extremely hot, ive come to ask whether i could fix it by taking the backplate off of it, or if i should take the cooler off of it and reapply thermal compound to the chip. any help is appreciated.

 

[clutchc]

The backplate is actually helping the chips cool. Usually the VRAM chips. So no sense removing that. And a GPU that new should not need the thermal paste replaced yet. What are these high temps that you are worried about?

 

[starspazattack]

its running in the upper 80s on load, sometimes even 90s, like i can touch the card and it burns my hand.

 

[clutchc]

its running in the upper 80s on load, sometimes even 90s, like i can touch the card and it burns my hand.

Yeah, that is warmer than normal. Is the fan running? Is it increasing its speed as temps increase? It should be howling if you are at 80-90C. Be sure of that first.
Then be sure you have the air flow inside your case to cool the card. That includes good cable management too.
Is this a fairly new card or one you bought used?
Lastly, replace the thermal paste if you can't come up with any other fix, but unless the card has been run to death doing bitcoin mining 24/7, the thermal paste shouldn't be needing changing yet.

List the system that you have so we can get a better idea of the environment.

 

[starspazattack]

the fans are definitely running as their supposed to, the airflow in my case is alright, im running a micro atx build but its got decent airflow, cable management is great, i bought it used, but the person i bought it from had only had it for a few months before a bought it. i thought that it may have been faulty thermal paste application from the factory because it has never run very cool at all, this is just the highest its ever gotten.
my rig has an amd fx 8350 cpu with an aftermarket air cooler by deepcool. my gpu is an xfx hotswap fan variant. my psu is a 430 watt that i need to upgrade soon as it is affecting my pcs stability.

 

[starspazattack]

my case is actually a thermaltake core v21 micro atx

 

[clutchc]

thermaltake core v21... I have my Intel build in one of those. Loud little sucker with all those vented sides.
Yeah, looks like you are going to have to do the TIM thing after all, at least to eliminate that being the issue, I guess. If it has always run hot from day one, then it may be what you say, although a bad TIM job at the factory is unusual.

Does anything change if you remove the case's sides/top and leave the innards exposed to the open air? I'm wondering about the dust filters being dirty.

 

[starspazattack]

it can be loud, but i love the customizability of the case. i thought about the dust filters as well, i cleaned them all and ran several benchmarks with the side panel being completely off and i havent seen any difference. ill have to replace the thermal compound and see how that goes. luckily for me i have thermal compound laying around.