GPU Overheating: Causes, Symptoms & How to Cool It Down

Are you concerned about more heat coming from your graphics processing unit than usual? If so, you’re right to be worried. An overheating GPU can damage not only its cores but also harm other components of your computer.

A GPU is one of the most expensive pieces of computer equipment, so no one wants their expensive piece of equipment to get damaged by overheating. Monitoring the GPU’s temperature is therefore imperative.

Let’s explore how you can identify when your GPU overheats, its causes and symptoms, and finally, what you can do to cool it down.

How Hot Is Too Hot for Your GPU?

GPUs are designed to handle high temperatures as they constantly operate under heavy loads that generate more heat. How high a temperature your GPU can tolerate depends on the manufacturer, quantity of thermal paste, airflow, and how old your GPU is.

In general, temperatures below 60°C are entirely safe for your GPU, while temperatures between 60°C and 90°C aren’t damaging, but you should consider more cooling at the higher end of the scale. At temperatures above 100°C, there is a high risk of hardware damage.

If your GPU is too old, the thermal paste has dried out, and there is no sufficient airflow, then it may not be safe to expose the GPU to temperatures over 80°C.

Causes of GPU Overheating

The following are the leading causes of GPU overheating:

1. Overloading GPU: The first overheating indicator is how much processing load you are putting on your GPU. In general, the higher the load on your GPU, the more heat it will produce and vice versa.
2. Not Cleaning GPU: The accumulation of dust, dirt, and lint on your GPU hardware is the second most common cause of its overheating. Unless you have the habit of cleaning your GPU regularly, there is a high probability that improper cleaning is causing your GPU to overheat.
3. Insufficient Airflow: By facing your GPU into the wall, you restrict the airflow that helps it remove heat from the system. This prevents your GPU from cooling efficiently.
4. Worn-Out Thermal Paste: High-quality thermal paste improves heat transfer from the GPU, which keeps its heat sinks working effectively. Over time, however, it gets hard and impedes the flow of heat out of the system. As a result, heat builds up, causing your GPU to overheat.

Symptoms of Overheated GPU

High fan noise, screen artifacts, and encountering graphics-related errors are some signs that tell you your graphics card is heating up too much, but the same symptoms may also appear if your GPU hardware is faulty or if your graphics card is outdated.

As a result, you should check the GPU temperature via dedicated software to confirm whether it is overheating that is causing these signs. Open Hardware Monitor, MSI Afterburner, and HWMonitor are a few common tools for monitoring GPU temperatures.

The following are some symptoms of an overheated GPU:

1. Fan noise: One of the first and most significant signs of GPU overheating is fan overspeeding as they attempt to dissipate the excessive heat. Fans making loud noises indicate that they are not performing as well in heat removal, which means overheating is putting a strain on the GPU fans.
2. Screen Artifacts: If you begin to see red tiles (or other glitches) all over your screen, it’s a sign something is wrong with your GPU.
3. Errors While Gaming: Whenever you see graphics-related errors like the graphics card not responding, the graphics card failing to recover from timeout, or anything similar while playing graphics-intensive games, or when your game starts to lag, glitch, or crash, you can safely assume that your graphics card is under strain.

Other possible reasons for GPU overheating include blue screens, PC errors, and sudden shut-downs under high loads.

Different Ways to Cool Down Your GPU

If it’s GPU overheating that’s causing the trouble, you can cool it by following the steps below.

1. Cleaning The GPU Fans: Properly clean your GPU fans, ensuring no dirt or lint stays inside to help them remove heat more effectively. Using an air compressor or rubbing the fan blades with alcohol is a safe way to clean fans. You should also properly dry it before reinstalling it on the computer.
2. Disable Overclocking: Higher the clock speed of the GPU cores, the more heat they produce. Hence, if your GPU is overclocked, consider resetting it to its normal clock speed. If your GPU is still heating up, try running it at underclock settings to see if that resolves the problem.
3. Inspect Hardware: Properly inspect the fans of your GPU to ensure they aren’t damaged (although it’s very rare). Replace them if they are worn out to solve the overheating problem.
4. Improve Airflow: Have you recently relocated your computer into a house, and it started overheating afterward? If that’s the case, make sure your GPU has enough airflow to breathe well.
5. Replace Thermal paste: Thermal paste does not wear out in a few months, and depending on the quality of the paste your GPU has, it can last up to 10 years. It will help if you still consider replacing thermal paste every three years for better efficiency, but replacing the thermal paste on your GPU isn’t an easy task.
6. Limit Your GPU Overloading: Overloaded GPUs tend to produce more heat, so avoid overstressing it by running multiple graphics-intensive tasks simultaneously. Overburdening may not only cause your GPU to overheat but also damage its fans and other components.

The different methods listed above improve the heat flow out of your overheated GPU. However, if they are not as effective as you expect, consider adding more fans to your computer case. By adding more fans, you can improve airflow out of your system, which in turn lowers GPU temperature.

Furthermore, if your budget allows it, consider installing a water cooling system for your graphics processing unit. If you combine air cooling with water cooling, your GPU temperature will drop significantly.

Do Outdated Graphics Drivers Cause GPU Overheating?

Outdated graphics drivers limit your hardware’s performance by preventing it from operating optimally. This can cause your GPU to overload even when you’re not overstressing it. Hence, updating your graphics driver helps your GPU run optimally, decreasing the amount of heat it produces.

Cool Your Overheated GPU

A GPU running at extreme temperature for an extended time can damage other parts of your computer. Thus, keeping an eye on your GPU temperature and keeping it cool will help your hardware last longer.

To find out the maximum temperature your GPU can withstand, visit the manufacturer’s website. Keep it a bit below the maximum value.

Last but not least, it isn’t unusual to see GPUs getting hotter as time passes. Continual loads also wear out hardware over time. Therefore, you should know the signs when it’s time to replace the entire GPU.