Why are my games freezing? HD3850?

[Schwartz]

Hi guys,
I have had my PC since about March 09. Up until last month, I could play any game(Inc Crysis) on my PC with no troubles(even if it was on low settings). But now for the last month, during my games my FPS drops to about 2 and this happens for 30s-60s. Then it will go back normal and happen again in 5m-10m.

If I put a house fan blowing into my case it does make the play time a lot longer and maybe the freezes happen every 30m. But this is obviously not a proper solution.

I have concluded that it could be a heating issue, but my CPU is running at 55C under Load and my GPU is maxing out at 73C under load. So that dosent seem like it could be the problem.

What else could it be? I havent made ANY changes to my system since before the problem so I dont think PSU could be the prob.

I want to maybe max out my GPU fan to 100%, what progs could I use?

Add: I also feel like I should add that my Intake fan has "stopped" working... it is spinning but I can feel almost NO air from it.

 

[FrancTheTank]

73C is fairly high on your gfx card.
I would replace the case fans if I was you, that seems to be the problem.

 

[Schwartz]

I would replace the case fans if I was you, that seems to be the problem.

Well my rear exhaust fans are performing perfect.. but my front one isnt.... And I dont know how to replace it because I have a Gigabyte 3D AURORA and as you can see, there is know access (AFAIK) to the intake fan

 

[greggpb]

re thermal past the heat sink on the gfx card

 

[Schwartz]

ok,
I cleaned out my WHOLE case = 2 Exhaust fans, CPU Fan, CPU Paste, GFX Fan.
Now I just played 45M straight without ANY interruption and only quit as I am bored of the game... think that could be the fix... will play more later to see if it is stable still.

But thanks for the input.