GPU running hot? How to diagnose and fix it yourself

If the frame rate suddenly drops, the PC gets very noisy or games crash unexpectedly, an overheating graphics card is often to blame. The good news is that you can identify and fix many of the causes yourself. If you take a systematic approach, you can usually improve cooling significantly without having to buy new hardware straight away.

The first step is a thorough assessment. Start by opening a program — such as GPU-Z, Hwinfo, or the Radeon Software or Nvidia app — to check the graphics card’s temperature.