...not literally. =)
Here's the story: I was playing a game (Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich) and all of a sudden I got these weird stretching artifacts on the screen; lines extending outwards (to the edges of the screen) from various objects. Odd. I tried playing on for a bit but after a few minutes it got much worse, to the point of being unplayable. So I quit the game and did a little web search.
I found that this problem is apparently caused by overheating, so I opened up the NVidia control panel. It read 117 degrees C! :-O
I was a bit skeptical of that. 117 degrees is well above the boiling point of water - surely that couldn't be right? Perhaps the heat probe was a bit buggered. So I opened up the case and gingerly touched the heat pipe on my GeForce 6600GT.
And burnt myself. Okay, now I believe it.
How the heck does it get to run at that temperature? It's only using stock cooling (a big chunky two-heatsink arrangement with a heat pipe running between them, and no fans) but I haven't overclocked it or anything. And it's nearly winter here, so the ambient temperature is pretty low.
I guess I'll have to investigate getting some extra cooling, which is a shame since my PC runs pretty quietly at the moment... variable-speed fans and all the rest. Alternatively I could underclock it, which isn't terribly appealing but is probably less hassle.
(Edit: Since I posted it's gone down to 74 degrees C, and falling.)
Thoughts?
ID:185081
 May 2 2006, 12:11 am
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Ive never had that problem and my PC is a form factory case where everything is tight together. the again I got empty PCI slots with the holes open. That might be a factor.
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40-60 sounds better. =) What card do you have?
The airflow is pretty good, all the ribbon cables are tucked up out of the way. The stock cooling is all working; I just have the CPU fan and a single large case fan. The latter is speed-controlled by the power supply unit based on the temperature. (The PSU also has a built-in fan, of course.) The room temperature is about 20-ish, I think. (That's what the thermostat says, but the thermostat is very dodgy.) There is a slight coating of dust, but not enough that I'd suspect it to cause any problems. Forgot to mention: I have ForceWare 81.98 drivers, though I doubt that's relevant. | |
Hah well I have much better airflow in my case. >_>
---- 2 80mm front intake fans (If I had the tools, I would cut out a hole for a 120mm. Much more efficient for the amount of space it uses than 2 80mm's) 1 80mm blowhole fan 1 120mm rear output fan 1 Intake Vent for my CPU, and don't forget that I've got a Heatsink/Fan on my CPU as well. And all of the case fans I have are blue UV reactive! =D ---- I currently run a Sapphire X1600Pro 512mb VRAM. Of course I got the stock cooling cranked up to 100% or it would be idling around 50 degrees celsius. I'd say, get rid of that dust and run the game again. See if the card gets that hot. Also, just wondering, are you overclocking your card? Hell, even if you aren't... if this gets out of control you might want to... *gulp* underclock it. However, some cards are really picky and don't like being underclocked... Some spew out artifacts when underclocked, others get hot for no good reason... and so forth. | |
Can't you put water cooling on gfx cards. Even if you can i would do some careful research if they can go together, If it can than the heat will be carryed away by water pretty cool.
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Watercooling is pretty damn expensive, and it takes a lot of time to set up. They use it for more hot setups like 7900 Quad SLI (Running 4 nVidia 7900's at the same time) and also for some hot CPU's.
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Edit your post while I'm replying to it, why don't you. =)
(Edit: Plus it timed out while I was posting this. :-/) I'm not really up for hardware modifications of that sort - I did build the computer from parts, but removing and re-attaching the heatsinks isn't something I really want to do unless I can avoid it. The lapping guide you linked to quoted decreases of 5 degrees in the best case - at 117 I don't think a decrease of 5 is going to change much. =) (It was probably higher than that in-game, too, since it would have cooled down while I was doing my web search.) Surely something must be wrong with the card if it's getting up to those kinds of temperatures? My cooling setup isn't particularly high-end, but I didn't think it was that bad. | |
No, I'm not overclocking anything.
I tried underclocking the card just then (core clock from 500Mhz to 400Mhz, and memory clock from (1.14 Ghz to 1 Ghz) and I'm still getting 117 degrees in-game. I'll try the dust now I guess... it really isn't very dusty though. *shrug* | |
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
Maybe your card is just crapping out on you. =p Maybe! How hot does it run when it's idle? It seemed to idle at 75 degrees C or so when I exited the game and didn't go back in for a while. | |
Uhh... well maybe it's hot because of your cooling, but anyways I already said that.
How hot was the card before? Like... Did it ever run cooler? Oh yeah... Your card is overclocked, Might be factory overclocked though... which is still a pretty stupid thing IMO because of your cooling. Default clocks are 500MHz for the Core and 500MHz for the Memory. | |
I didn't check the temperature before now, so I don't know. It's possible it got damaged while I was installing it, or during shipment. I actually have another computer with the same specs/cooling/etc., so I'll check that one out tomorrow and see if it's the same.
Anyway, I cleaned the dust off it as best I could and it still gets right up into the 120s during gameplay. I didn't really expect any improvement just from that. | |
I didn't either, mainly because you said there wasn't much dust on your heatsink. But it was well worth the try. >_<
If everything checks out on the other computer, and if you don't want to do anything to the card's current cooling, maybe you could take this to some PC modding forums. That's where all of the "pro's" are. http://forums.pcapex.com/heatsinks_fans/ These "pro's" would probably come up with a better solution than any I came up with. | |
Is there still any kind of warranty on it? Out of the box, it should run perfectly, and the highest you should ever see a video card go, especially one that isn't overclocked (as far as you know), is around 70C.
If you don't have one installed, find an overclocking utility to see what it's clocked up to, and see if it's possible to change the fan speed (my x800 GTO could do this with the stock fan). | |
How about trying to open the case and have a fan blow directly on it? Just a standard house fan or something, but it will get a lot of air to pass over the heatsink. This will give you an idea of weather or not a fan will really help it. If it does, you could probably rig up a small case fan somewhere close to it.
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Crispy Wrote:
I found that this problem is apparently caused by overheating, so I opened up the NVidia control panel. It read 117 degrees C! :-O Thanks for giving me a laugh, Crispy. :') Either way, un-dust your fans, try out a new fan, if that still doesn't work call the Shop or NVidia Support and ask them what you could do, and if you could switch your current card with the same, but a working one. If all that doesn't work, I'd buy a new cards, but that's ridiculous seeing as it's a GF 6600. :/ | |
According to him, there isn't much dust. He undusted the heatsinks and it made zero difference. And remember! He's running a silent cooling setup. Zero fans on the GPU.
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Cinnom wrote:
Is there still any kind of warranty on it? Yeah, I'm pretty sure the warranty is still current. If you don't have one installed, find an overclocking utility to see what it's clocked up to It's clocked to 500 MHz core, 1.something GHz memory. I looked up the specs and that's what it's supposed to be. and see if it's possible to change the fan speed (my x800 GTO could do this with the stock fan). No fan. =) Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I just checked the other PC, and it appears to be running slightly cooler - 60 degrees C when idle, and 105 degrees C under load. That's still way too hot though. The cooler PC is sitting up on a desktop, and the warmer PC is sitting near (not on!) the carpet, so that might account for it. I'll try putting the warmer PC up on the desk and see if that helps. Then I think I might try installing another case fan to improve the airflow. | |
D4RK3 54B3R wrote:
According to him, there isn't much dust. He undusted the heatsinks and it made zero difference. And remember! He's running a silent cooling setup. Zero fans on the GPU. I didnt read that, a gpu without a fan is going to get hot no matter what, even with heat pipes, its going to get hotter than an average video card | |
How is the airflow in your case? Is your stock cooling still working? Is the average room temperature warm?
There could be a million other things like maybe dust collecting in the graphic card's heatsink/fan. That's pretty much what happened with my Radeon9800SE. The Fan stopped working from all of the dust and the card blew out. I bought myself another one shortly afterwards though.
[EDIT]: Okay I just reread your post. You've got a silent cooling setup on your GPU... I don't really like those but meh, it's all just personal preference.
A few things you could do:
- Lapping the heatsinks. There's a tutorial on it here.
http://guides.pcapex.com/modding/mirror_finish_lapping.php
- Reapplying the thermal paste. The lapping tutorial
should have steps on how to do this.
- Dusting out the heatsink. Dust can really heat up your card by blocking air from the heatsink. Easy to take care of. You could get yourself a can of pressurized air at a local electronics shop from $10 to $20 USD.
- Installing a new cooling setup on the GPU. Might be the hardest but most effective of the options.
http://tinyurl.com/pshx4