Recently my 3D games screen was halting around every 30 seconds, I tried a number of times before realizing that the fan on the graphics card was not turning. Thinking this was a easy fix, I have replaced the fan with a artic cooling vga silencer unit from overclockers.com.

Now the computer boots up with a garbled bios message screen, windows desktop is fine, but the 3D games screens are mismatched and garbled in places. I have tried reinstalling graphics drivers direct X 9.0c and problem stays.

The old heatsink was a nightmare to remove, my worry is I may have damaged it(no visible damage) i really am going around in circles.

Please help.

:-[ :-[

It’s quite hard to tell where the system is failing in this circumstance, but unfortunately, if your initial problems were indeed the result of an overheating graphics chip, the damage could have already been done.

It’s possible you didn’t fit the new heat sink correctly; poor contact to the GPU will result in a heat build up. If you have an NVIDIA card, load up a 3D game, go to Windowed mode and check the GPU temperature. If you have an ATI card that supports Overdrive, you can see the temperature there, otherwise you’ll need a third party tool like those bundled with brand-name cards, or ATI Tool. I knew a guy with an HIS Excalibur 9800 Pro IceQ once (9800 Pro with factory attached VGA Silencer), and he would get load temperatures of around 50-55 degrees, so you should expect silimar.

Otherwise, software issues could be your coincidental bane. Try the latest graphics card drivers…