When your graphics card is too old or has serious cooling problems, it is advisable to completely disassemble it and clean its interior. In this article, we will teach you how to clean the graphics card of your PC step by step.

When Should I Clean My Graphics Card?

Obviously, there is no set period in which it is ‘mandatory’ to clean it. Rather, it depends on the user, the specific model, and the conditions in which said graph has been. Anyway, we leave you with some signs that could indicate that it is time to do it, or rather to check if everything is going well with the temperatures of your GPU :

1. The temperature of the graphics in games is higher than normal. For example, if your graph used to be 70 or 75 degrees at maximum load, and now it is much hotter than normal. Theirs is that from time to time you check that everything is going well in the temperatures. Nor is it a matter of obsessing over it.
2. Taking a look at the graphics card or even the interior of your PC in general, you notice a large accumulation of dust that suggests that the graphics would have serious problems cooling properly.
3. It could also be a cause of crashes, reboots, or performance drops in games or other programs. Although there are a million causes of this type of problem, the temperature of the graph is a factor to consider. The next point teaches you to know the temperature of your graph.

How To Disassemble And Clean The Graphics Card?

If you have decided to clean your graphics card, let’s go with it.

There is a wide variety of assemblers and models on the market, each one is different and has its own way of opening the graphics card. We have done it with a Sapphire R9 380X Nitro, and we are going to show you a process that is usually similar in most graphics cards, but there are differences between many models. For example, the most recent ones usually provide facilities to remove the fans and clean them. We recommend that you support yourself with a disassembly video for your exact model.

We will start by removing the rear screws of the graphics card, in our case we have a backplate. The question is should we withdraw it or not, the truth is that it is not necessary in our case. Although there may be dust in there, the hassle is not necessary. We have withdrawn it but, we insist, it is not necessary.

The first thing we are going to do is to extract exclusively the screws that are supporting the case of the graphics card that has the fans. They differ from those that support the heatsink because they are the ones that would have to be removed to remove the backplate, while in the case of the screws corresponding to the heatsink they have nothing to do with the backplate. On other graphics cards, it would all come together.

Once those screws are removed, we carefully extract the case with the fans, remembering to disconnect its connector before anything else.

Once this is done, we find ourselves with a dilemma that we will have to solve. It is a question of whether or not it is worth continuing to disassemble the graph. We explain ourselves: To remove the dust from the heatsinks it is not necessary to remove them, it can be done without taking them outside. The fact of removing them will make cleaning more comfortable but if we remove it it would be mainly to be able to replace the thermal paste of our graphics card. Then it’s time for you to consider whether to replace it or not, something you probably shouldn’t do if the graph isn’t very old.

Well, if you are going to clean only the heatsink, everything is correct. There are several methods to clean the dust: the use of compressed air ( remember to use it in the correct orientation without spilling liquid, and immobilize the fans while we remove the dust ), a brush, or a vacuum cleaner … For heatsinks like this, it would probably come with a brush, although canisters of compressed air are cheap and can be used to clean the entire PC, or maybe you already have a compressor at home.

Let’s take a look at what it takes to run two 144Hz gaming monitors, from GPU power to DisplayPort or HDMI through the different configurations of Windows, NVIDIA, and AMD interfaces.

Multiple displays offer a large desk space to use for multitasking and, of course, gaming. Doubling the size means double the satisfaction for many people and good reason. The high-speed 144Hz, thin-bezel gaming monitors nest beautifully next to each other to create an oversized window that is almost perfect for both gaming and other entertainment applications such as streaming. And besides, as we have said before, we also get a great desktop for use beyond mere leisure. If we are interested in multitasking, having multiple screens makes sense.

In this article, we’ll focus more on gaming and how to make sure both displays are running at their native 144Hz because it’s that cool dual-screen high-frame-rate action we’re craving after all. However, we must always bear in mind that by choosing the dual-screen path we may have to sacrifice pixels for frames. For example, if we opt for two QHD / 2K displays at 144 Hz, we will put our graphics card in difficulties and we may have to reduce the resolution to Full HD and, even then, we will need a powerful and top-of-the-line GPU.

Everything (or almost) depends on the GPU:

It goes without saying that the best way to connect two 144 Hz displays to our PC is to do it directly. Any modern GPU will have multiple video outputs, so you just need to connect both monitors directly to the graphics card. But beware: we will need a fairly powerful GPU to handle two 144Hz monitors. Despite efforts to mirror displays through the operating system or GPU drivers without all the computational cost of a separate display, the general rule of thumb still applies that If we have two 144 Hz monitors with a resolution of 2560 x 1440, our GPU should be able to offer a true resolution of 5120 x 2880, which is more than 4K. Non-3D desktop modes shouldn’t be a problem as the GPU will treat both monitors as a 2560 x 1440 display but,

One “fix” for this is to accept the sacrifice of speed for resolution, as we said earlier. If we set both monitors to 1920 x 1080, suddenly our GPU will “only” need to handle a theoretical maximum of 3840 x 2160, ie 4K. If we want to keep 144 Hz, then 4K at those frame rates requires the most powerful GPU currently available. Options like NVIDIA Surround and AMD Eyefinity technologies try to replicate displays without an exponential increase in GPU demand, but they may not always work with all games and in all situations. The best advice is to have a graphics card that can handle two monitors in the resolution and frame rates that we want.

One Monitor, One Card:

NVIDIA and AMD no longer encourage multi-GPU configurations for consumers, although they both support this practice to some extent. The GeForce 20 series offers SLI support to varying degrees, and AMD’s Navi 10 cards (like the 5700XT) also make it possible with a few tweaks to the configuration. If we can have two graphics cards on our PC, then the performance problem is basically solved. Achieving QHD at 144Hz is quite doable even for mid-range gaming GPUs, so two 2070s will do. Obviously, this comes at an additional cost, but it is what the dual-screen entails at such high frame rates without other sacrifices.

What Cables To Use?

The best option is DisplayPort. Your graphics card likely has two DisplayPort outputs, so just connect the cables from the graphics card ports to the monitor inputs. In general, DisplayPort tends to offer better optimization for PC use than HDMI. As we are talking about a dual 144Hz display, HDMI may not be ideal as it is not designed for such high frame rates, unless we want to limit the resolution to 1080p. HDMI 2.0b can offer 144Hz at 1440p, but it depends a lot on the cable, the monitor, and the graphics card. In contrast, DisplayPort 1.2 or higher almost universally supports 144Hz at 1440p.

With DisplayPort, we also have the option of daisy chaining monitors. That means that, instead of connecting both screens with two cables to the graphics card, we will use one cable from the card to the first monitor and another from this to the second monitor. However, we do not recommend this setting for games as it has higher latency. Again, the best option is to connect both monitors directly to the graphics card via DisplayPort.

How To Configure The Monitors?

For desktop use, just go to Start, Settings, Display, and look for the Multiple screens section. Both monitors should be there; otherwise, you have to click Detect to find them manually. Now we can choose to duplicate the screen (have two identical desktops on both monitors) or expand it (a giant desktop that covers the two monitors).

However, this applies to normal use, without games or 3D. If we just configure dual-screen in Windows, it may work for games, as many modern titles detect this setting and will go into full-screen windowed mode. This will be a relief for the GPU, as it will not count as two separate displays. However, it is almost certain that we will not get 144 Hz, but 60 Hz at most.

To ensure a true full-screen gaming experience, the most important part of the setup focuses on the graphics card panel. For NVIDIA, right-click anywhere on the Windows desktop, access the NVIDIA control panel, and then go to Display and Configure Multiple Displays. We can assign the main screen and detect screens just to make sure the correct ones are displayed.

With AMD, you furthermore might right-click anyplace on the Windows desktop, access the AMD Radeon computer code, then show.

Sometimes It’s Sensible To Ascertain Double:

All this cite performance and configuration should not place the United States of America off. Having 2 screens is wondrous and provides the United States of America several joys, and for that alone it’s worthwhile. With ever-increasing GPU powers and forward resolution is not everything, we’ll be glad. consecutive generation of GPUs (as of the writing of this article) can don’t have any drawback handling QHD at 144Hz, even within the reasonable section, that the future is bright for twin displays.

Graphics cards are tiny, self-contained computers that are specifically created to figure with their element boards employing a style referred to as a “reference card.” you’ll have detected that it refers to most of the fundamental version of a video card in third-party retail of video cards. The board itself is that the one that has the microcode that manages the board of parts like the BIOS of your motherboard, and therefore the drivers are put in within the package to inform the OS of the way to use the board. while not your system’s interface connexion and drivers, that system cannot profit from the cardboard, and it’s hit-and-miss if it’s a default video driver. “

How To Maintain Graphics Card Performance:

If the cardboard is PCI, keep or attempt to sell it. Some classic PCI-capable motherboards still exist for HTPC configurations exploitation of the ARM frits and similar non-standard CPUs. PCI video cards are onerous to seek out, as a result of they solely have this exigent niche and lots of don’t seem to be as powerful because of the AMD Radeon die that their supporting processors have.

If the cardboard is PCI-E, keep it. When I do not use it and it’s fairly new, sell it. When you will use it, however, do not would like it, keep one as a spare just in case your video card shuts down and you have got to infix another to urge whereas shopping for a brand new one.

If the cardboard is end-of-generation AGP cards just like the early GeForce cards or the Voodoo5 and Voodoo6 cards, you would possibly be ready to sell to hobbyists. If it’s an Associate in Nursing previous AGP card, recycle it.