HD 6950 runs hot no matter what I do

[Jimmy Buckets]

Hey there, long time lurker here, first time poster. So here's the thing. I'm assembling a PC for a nephew using old parts I got scattered around the house, and in the process of doing so I stumbled upon an old HD 6950 by Sapphire I used to run in my main rig almost a decade back. 

 

Card turns on, posts and runs at an idle temperature of 120°F (50°C) and over 195 °F (90°C) on load, which I deem to high even for that card. That is with the fan going full throttle and after I've replaced the thermal paste (Artic MX-4) as well as the thermal pads. I also checked the heatsink and it's okay apart from a little bit of dust I blew out. I'm at a loss here. Perhaps I used too thick thermal pads (1 mm) and the heatsink is not sitting right on the GPU? It certainly doesn't seem like it.

 

This is the model I got

 

 

Thanks for the help in advance. 

[jaslion]

Very big possibility that too thick thermal pads were used. Then again these did run hot but not 90c hot. Is your room maybe higher temperature than normal? How is the airflow in the case?

[Jimmy Buckets]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

Very big possibility that too thick thermal pads were used. Then again these did run hot but not 90c hot. Is your room maybe higher temperature than normal? How is the airflow in the case?

I've been thinking about trying to run it for ten minutes with no thermal pads at all and see how the core reacts. If it doesn't heat up then we found what's wrong, right? For some reason I can't find anywhere how thick the pads are supposed to be. 

 

As for the case, it's an Aerocool Streak, so not very good airflow. I've got three fans on the front as well as another one on the bottom pulling in air straight into the graphics card.

 

Temperatures have been really hot, I live in Southern Spain and we are in the middle of a heatwave, so I guess that plays into it too.

 

 

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, Jimmy Buckets said:

I've been thinking about trying to run it for ten minutes with no thermal pads at all and see how the core reacts. If it doesn't heat up then we found what's wrong, right? For some reason I can't find anywhere how thick the pads are supposed to be. 

 

As for the case, it's an Aerocool Streak, so not very good airflow. I've got three fans on the front as well as another one on the bottom pulling in air straight into the graphics card.

 

Temperatures have been really hot, I live in Southern Spain and we are in the middle of a heatwave, so I guess that plays into it too.

 

 

Thats going to most likely kill your card in a minute. So please don't.

 

Open the side panel and see what happens.

 

Yeah your case is one of those no airflow cases which is horrendous.

 

Hot temperatures, a blower style cooler and a case that has pretty much no airflow what so ever is a recipe for overheating.