To clean, or not to clean?

[Marten Philip Kelders]

To clean, or not to clean? Is the question that I'm asking my self.

My lovely gts250 started running a bit high on temperatures for the past few days( 61-80 in-game), so I decided to clean it out entirely.
I took the card out, separated the actual card and it's cooling components, cleaned out the cooling block as I like to call it ( the metal frame work ) and the fans removed the large quantity of dust and put the whole thing back together and back in to my system.

Turned on my PC and executed the Speedfan monitoring tool and saw that all temperatures were fine. But than I launched one of the game I frequently like to play and it started rising abnormally higher even higher before when it was still infested with dust. It actually reached 100c and my computer automatically disables any further processing from the card disabling any video output.

So my question is...

How in earth could cleaning my graphics end up in extreme overheating?

 

[clutchc]

I'll bet you didn't clean off the old thermal paste and replace it with new, yes? Did the VRMs have thermal pads on them? If so, they will be degraded too once removing them and blowing dust over them.

 

[Marten Philip Kelders]

I did not forget to remove the old thermal paste.. I actually forgot to check if there was still anything on it but there wasn't so I had to re-apply some thermal paste and now the problem has been resolved thanks for your input though. SIlly me old me.