My video card is sitting with about 2mm of clearance on top of my sound card. I'm concerned that the card isn't getting enough space for the fan to suck up air. It is at 46 degrees with no load. And got up to 65C pretty quickly when i loaded it up. Should I remove the sound card? I can't move it anywhere. Its in the only spot that it can be in. Don't mind the messy cables. I will clean it up later. Card is the Asus 5850 if you are wondering. Sound card is the amazing creative labs audigy.
If it were a stock cooler version, the fan would have plenty of clearance, but sadly not. Now, I'm assuming the bottom card there is a PCI, right? Same for your sound card? I'm looking at the layout of the P5K Deluxe, and from what I can see, you could swap those around if it would give the fan more breathing room. What is the bottom card providing? USB? From what I can see, your options are to remove either PCI card altogether, or get a PCI-E version to stick above the graphics card. From those temps, I wouldn't worry too much, but keep an eye on it for sure. It might be worth loading the GPU for a long period, to find out how high they get.
I figured a 3rd option. Make use of the onboard sound. So far its working. I tried it when i first got the computer and had a lot of static noise. Maybe the drivers have improved. The card on the bottom is a wireless network card. the onboard wireless was terrible. removing the sound card dropped the idle temps to 36 degrees. pretty good difference if you ask me. The heatpipe that I touched with my thumb, has my fingerprint on it.... and it won't come off... Maybe that should be a new idea for registering cards? (just kidding)
Weird coincidence. I tried my on board sound tonight because I have microphone issues with my Audigy 2 and I went back to the Audigy after half an hour. The on board sound is just so awful... I couldn't live with it
you could rig a 80/92/120mm fan to blow onto it, as this will aid airflow into the cooler and cool the exposed parts (like the heat pipes) passively. Every little helps as they say, although it probably wouldn't look pretty... And assuming this is the board then what sleepygamer said above would be the easist route
That's the exact image I was using for reference! :O A decent PCI-E sound card would be the cheapest option, I think, if the onboard sound is too bad to bear.
Tut sleepy, the cheapest option is to buy nothing surely... Hence the swapping idea being the cheapest.
played a few games, watched some vids. on board sound is actually as good if not better than the old audigy.
lies. The problem is not when something is playing, it's when it's silent. You will notice eventually
how did you find out the sound card's temperature? your picture looks like your sound card have got some airflow from graphics card's intake. so surely that's enough to keep it cooled. i've got mine setup like this, with a PCI exhaust next to the sound card.
It was the video card temps I was referring to. Considering taking it back anyway, performance isn't that much better than my old 4850 to really justify the price.
if your playing games below 1080p resolution then I doubt you'll notice much of a performance difference... and those temps shouldn't do any harm to your sound card, those are temps of the chip itself, the soundcard shouldn't be affected by the ambient temp surrounding the hd5850...
So much WAT in this thread. 1. The temperatures are great 2. Why didn't you just swap the sound card and WLAN as suggested, the WLAN-card is significantly smaller 3. Onboard sound better than Audigy? 4. Noticing no difference between HD4850 and HD5850? You're a man of great mystery.
1. I was concerned because it was my first day with a new card and didn't want to damage it with too little airflow. Temps became better after I removed the sound card so i'm happy with it now. 2. The wlan card is smaller but would still partly block the fan on the video card. No reason why not to leave it where it is. 3. The audigy is a very old card. I had it back in 2005 or earlier. Stands to reason that onboard has caught up. 5. I discovered last night that my cpu was throttling. Could be the reason that I don't see a difference between video cards.
