VGA Cooling

[Lerster]

Just wondering how many people here with newer cards, replaced their manufacturer heatsink/fan on their graphic cards? or use custom cooling for their cards?

Just was wondering.

As it was mentioned to me something i overlooked was "graphic card temperatures" my card goes up to about 72-75C with the fan cranked to 100% with the evga precision tool. An yet i still have issues with games (steam games) crashing on me such as battlefield 2: bad company, etc.

Just was wondering how many out there replaced their heatsink/fans on the graphic card and had positive experiences?

I currently use an EVGA GTX 560 Ti.

[Spoon]

You don't need to do anything with your graphics card heatsink or fan. 75 C is completely normal. I would only start worrying if it starts hitting 90+ on a regular basis.

Edit: And even if it did hit 90 or so, that's not going to be the cause of your games shutting down. Once the card reaches a certain temp, it will start throttling itself down to decrease the operating temp.

[Lerster]

hmm yeah i'll have'ta see when my new board + headsink/cpu fan arrive... and i transplant it with artic silver... and move my shit over.

As i still think its a (board) issue.

As i didn't expect the graphic card to be a major issue but i didn't ever consider the "heat" factor of the card either.

We'll we'll see, worse comes to worse, i can only quake... and then eventually when my debts lower i upgrade pc's and never buy Navidia again :p

[bluntz]

I almost always replace the fan and heatsink
Arctic silver and lapp the heatsink.

[LambentHammerBurst]

^^^ What bluntz said. Arctic Silver is easily the best heatsink paste. On many of my cards I never do replace the fan/heatsink. I do however reseat them with Arctic Silver. The issue with stock is it generally is crap.
On the note of a VGA cooler, I myself have used the PCA slot fans, and they helped out quite a bit.

[Lerster]

interesting never thought to use artic silver on the graphic card.

Maybe i'll try it on my old 9800's as i still have them.

Had one inquire on someone trying to buy em off me but i talked em out of the sale lol.

O well ^^

[Spoon]

Like I said before....those temps are completely normal, don't waste the thermal paste reapplying your gpu's heatsink. You're a good 20 degrees C away from "the danger zone".

[LambentHammerBurst]

It's always a good option as stock usually does suck. It should give him some drop.
Like you said though he isn't in the danger zone - however he could be entering it in some games which is why they crash. My x1600 p.o.s. which is a Silent Edition (no fan - it was Free lol) gets up there in temps in Dark Places - nothing insane but the moment I close DP it drops almost instantly.

My overall best route though, get one of those PCI slot fans, if you have a spare one.
Another, try a different slot on the motherboard. Sometimes a simple fix is the best fix.

[R00k]

Either way it's a nice idea, reminds me to get some paste as I've baked my gfx card TWICE already

[Spoon]

I think I need a little clarification here. Ler, what were you doing to stress the gpu when you saw those temps?

[Lerster]

battlefield 2: bad company with max settings gave me a 72-75c temp on my new card.

I tested my old 9800 card just one of em not sli'd earlier with the new thermal compound on it, and found the card runs extremely hot 77C in just idle... in game it reaches 106C, and evga precision did go yellow in the monitoring graph.

My new 560Ti, runs a cool 42C while idle, around 50C while running various apps.

An in game reaches no higher than 82-84C (tested it on L4d2 with settings maxed at 1650x1050 res).

But yet i still get crashes after, a map or two.

Sometimes not even thru a whole map.

So its definately not related to an overheat issue of the graphic card, at least not anymore.

Has to be a problem with the mainboard itself.

[Spoon]

Have you updated your motherboard's BIOS since you got the new card? I know a while ago when I got a new card, I couldn't even load windows with it until I updated the BIOS.

[AAA]

Maybe you need more case cooling to bring your temps down. I use 3x140mm fans and 3x120mm fans, My GPU temps are 38°C at idle (XFX 6850), CPU temps at 30°C and that's with only half the fans running, summer time will be the real test.

[Lerster]

the new card temps i ain't worried about.

As for the bios, i've tried to update it but the cdrom iso doesn't fucking work. An the board is again an EVGA product.

i did send them a complaint about that.

An there's no floppy controller on the mainboard so even though they have a "FLOPPY" bootdisk available for flashing your bios, there's no fucking floppy disk drive controller on the mainboard, just an IDE for IDE HDD's not floppy disk drives =(.

An i don't own a usb floppy drive yet lol.

So in end whenever my new mainboard comes, and i transplant my cpu into that board... and shift my drives over. Then i guess i'll know for sure if it was a problem with the board or not.

Pretty sure i did read in the bios update for this old 680i LT board, that there was a fix for a pci-e/sli compatibility issue.

But that doesn't help me since their cdrom boot image is crap, it boots/loads but then reboots without letting you "select y" to flash the bios. lol.

An trust me i redl'd it several times to try it again, and i would try just extracting the iso and throwing it onto a jump drive, but i can't find my jump drive... it just disappeared on me. >_<

[bluntz]

I had to drive all the way to Tampa to find a usb floppy drive.
Get yourself one if you can.
I cringe over 50C on anything is bad, bad.
I use a piece of glass with fine grit sandpaper taped to it to make sure the heatsink is dead flat.
If overheated the sink will distort causing the mating surfaces to seperate and loose conduction.
Using anything other than Arctic Silver is not advised.