Once you have everything reassembled and the machine powered back up, listen out for the graphics card fan(s) that they are quiet and spinning adequately enough to cool the heatsink surface. Now that the hardware inspection is complete, you can continue to test while the GPU is operational. You can read our article here on how to replace your GPU’s thermal paste if you need a step-by-step guide to help you do it. If the card is more than a year old, or you have no idea about the card’s history, replacing the thermal paste on the GPU ensures that you are doing what you can to give the card a chance to perform at its best to find out whether it’s in good order or not in all tests. Make sure the GPUs cooling fan(s) is working properly Important: Make sure your computer is turned off and no power is connected to it before proceeding. We need to inspect a few things on the graphics card to do this. Cooling is paramount, so we must ensure that the GPU cooler works properly. I prefer to look at the hardware first so that anything potentially damaging cannot harm the GPU any further. If not, download and install the latest drivers or update the existing ones before continuing. I’m also assuming that you have the correct graphics card drivers installed and are up to date. Important: I highly recommend disabling any overclocking that you may be running before proceeding. Additionally, there are some essential hardware inspections and maintenance procedures that you can do to contribute to your graphics card running with improved stability. We can conduct a few different graphics card tests to establish whether or not your GPU is up to the task. Run some GPU performance tests or do some gaming for a few hours.How to test your graphics card using built-in tools on Windows.

Running stress tests while you monitor the temperature.

Now it’s time to perform some graphics card tests.

Things to keep in mind when testing your GPU.

Make sure the GPUs cooling fan(s) is working properly.

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