What temps? 8800gts 640

[Helgaiden]

My 8800gts 640 recently started artifacting and discoloring really bad in bios and everywhere in between. Windows eventually wouldnt let the card start citing that the device was reporting problems. I called EVGA and nomwatter what kind of hell i raised, they kept throwing it in my face that i registered it too late. Bought it in May, registered it in October. Honestly...a few months late on registering it wouldnt really matter imo. Those 5 months of it going non-registered wouldnt have contributed it to failing 2 years later. But oh well. The tech mentioned looking up reflowing the solder on the card so after I hung up on him, I went and looked it up. Baked the card again and now its working again. Yay.

But i want to keep an eye on temps. I have EVGA Precision running right now, cranked the fan to 100%. Idle temps are about 51c. What temps should I be aiming for for Idle and Load?

[EarthDog]

That is their policy, 30 days. Quite simple.

Keep it under 80C. Idle temps with fan at 100% is 51C? Wow. Clean that thing out of dust and/or reapply the TIM on it and see if that lowers them a bit.

As far as idle temps to shoot for. Dont worry about idle, just worry about load. :)

[Helgaiden]

so 51c too high for idle then. When i reassembled after baking it i left the thermal paste on the heatsink alone. The thermal paste on the GPU was cleaned off prior to baking. I used the rest of my Ceramique on the gpu after baking. Applied, spread it with a card, then applied the rest w/o spreading and put the heatsink on. Should i buy some new thermal paste and completely redo it? Im fine with applying it to processors as its much more straightforward but im unfamiliar with applying it to a GPU heatsink as it looks like it needs much more (IE razor thinning it is a no go). Any tips?

[EarthDog]

Crap, you have GTS640, I was talking about GTS512, my bad. Those temps arent as bad on idle, but again, idle doesnt matter. What happens when you run Furmark? What are the LOAD temps?

[Helgaiden]

ill try that and report back. Yeah...the 512 came out a few months after i got mine. Needless to say...wasnt too happy about that lol.

[Helgaiden]

ran Furmark for a little over 1000 seconds and highest it got was 81c. It bounced around alot between 80 and 81 for a while though. Was running at at 1680x1050 with 4x MSAA.
Heres a screenie...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v330/Helgaiden/furmark_000001.jpg

[EarthDog]

Thats about as hot as you want to get it. Perfectly fine. Lower is ALWAYS better though.

[Helgaiden]

Cool, thanks. You rock.