Lag/Overheat/Dust/Fans!!!

[aps16]

Okay so recently I've run into a problem with my hardware (I think). Whenever I start any game, ANY game, it works fine for a couple of minutes then it starts lagging horribly. It is like, at time 't' seconds the game runs at 60fps, then at 't+1', it lags and fps goes down, then again at 't+2' back to 60fps, then lags again and so on.

So I thought that maybe I've got a lot of dust which is choking the fans and the CPU is getting overheated. I opened the cabinet and cleaned everything, removed dust from the fans n all. And I plugged it back and didn't close the case just to check and guess what I found; my GPU's fan ain't spinning. I mean the card is getting power but not the fan.

So my question is, can this fan problem cause that weird lag in my games? This lag thingy started back a couple of months ago, and before that I was playing games like Far Cry 3, Skyrim (with ENBs), Witcher 2 and some other graphic intensive games without any kind of slowdowns or lag i.e. whatever fps I was getting, it remained constant, not that strange thing that is happening now.

 

Anyway here are my specs-

Win7 (32bit)

Core 2 due E7500 2.93GHz

ATI Radeon HD 5670

2 gigs of RAM

2 WD Blue HDDs (320GB and 1TB)

 

I know it's not anything great, but still I should get constant fps (even if it's shitty), right?

 

TIA

[Xela_]

Yes. I would recommend to never start any 3d heavy application without active cooling of your graphics card and your processor.

You gotta fix these fans ASAP. Also your GPU could die because of overheating.

EDIT: Don't know why it is not on other games, but it is still not healthy.

[aps16]

Okay, but as I said - This problem plagues any game I play. It was not there a couple of months back, but now even a 10 year old game has this.

[sila]

If the gpu fan isnt spinning, it is most likely overheating, and being throttled down to try and compensate.  I would assume that would be the reason you get lower framerates after a few minutes. Have you tried using software to check GPU temperatures? When you cleaned it out, did you try removing the GPU and putting it back in? It might help, doing that can fix some odd problems if its been plugged in for a long time.

 

If that doesnt help, easiest fix would likely be to get a new GPU, You can get an r9 250x for like 100$ on amazon, it's not a bad card for the price.

 

Edit: just make sure the card will fit in your case, if you have a small case you may need to get a low profile version of the card, and make sure your power supply can handle it

[aps16]

Okay so I prodded the card fan a little and it started working. Games are working fine too, I haven't noticed any lag spiked after the fan started spinning. So everything's hunky dory for now. I'll post if anything new comes up. Thanks!