Quote from: poby on Today at 07:08:38 AM

I carefull sanded the crater out of the heatsink and VERY carefully sanded the GPU heatspreader using very fine sandpaper. Completely removed the heatsink crater but left a much smaller pit in the heatspreader as I wasn't game to go too deep. Then I had to deal with cleaning the microscopically fine metal powder that was undoubtedly left on the card. Put it all back together and... well definitely an improvement. Instead of running 10 degrees hotter it's now only about 4 degress hotter.

Definitely nothing wrong with the fans and I can't see anything amiss with any of the components. The other 7 cards in the rig are fine so it's not the power supply. The reported watts is normal and the total power drawn by the rig from the socket is normal and the card had been running 24/7 for a month or two before I got around to cracking it open to see why it was 10 degrees hotter, so I expect it will continue to run fine especially as it's now only 4 degrees hotter. Appears to be solely a heating issue caused by a defect in the heatsink or heatspreader, maybe an airpocket, who knows. Up until a few months ago, it had been running pretty much non-stop for 4 years at a normal temperature. Interestingly, it's winter here so temperature-wise, it actually occurred when it less stressed than 6 months ago.

Change the thermal pad on this video card at the beginning of summer and install additional cooling on the other side of the video card.
This is a little sisit the temperature.
Your radiator may have been made of substandard materials.
I hope that your video card is the last one in the farm, because the last video card always has the highest temperature