I think my vid card may be getting too hot, and is crashing during games. I don't have AC in my house, and my thermostat is currently reading 83F. At 11:30pm. Around the corner in a hallway. So my computer room, even with the window wide open, and the ceiling fan going, is probably at least 80F. Just loaded SpeedFan, and it's reporting my Temps as 90F for case, and 100F for the CPU (Temp2 and Temp1 respectively) Motherboard is a Giga-Byte GA7-N400Pro2 (rev2) System is: AMD AthlonXP 2400+ (not overclocked, using a Vantec AeroFlow) ATI Radeon9700Pro (stock ATI cooler, not OC'ed two PCI slots under it are open) Antec True550 power supply Antec SX1030B tower (Cheiftec Dragon) w/1 intake fan, 2 exhaust fans 4 Hard drives total (3x7200RPM, 1x10000RPM) I suspect the vid card is overheating, as I will be playing a game (BF1942, JK:A) and it will crash. Normal use, everything is OK. Starting tomorrow, I am going to be removing two hard drives, and putting in a single SATA drive. I am also planning to put a blowhole in the top. I have put a window in the side of my case, would it be a good idea to put a fan in the window, blowing directly onto the vid card? Or am I going in the entirely wrong direction with this? Thanks, Jason A.
what kind of crashing? if the screen just locks up then its the video card overheating putting a fan blowing onto the vid card should help and the blowhole will also help
Try running some games with the side cover off.. That should help cooling a bit to help troubleshoot.. Your CPU temp is pretty normal and case temp slightly above normal.. Your vid card just have the stock heatsink? -scoob8000
Lets see... Stock cooling on the vid card As far as the games crashing, BF1942 (which had never crashed before yesterday) dropped to the desktop, with a notice about how VPU Recover was able to resume, do you want to send an error report to ATI? I was then able to click on the BF1942 on the taskbar and keep playing.... Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, has had horrible crashing problems for some time. Typically, the display would get corrupted, I would get a horrible squeeling noise, and then my monitor would go black, and act like it was going into power saving mode.... As of today, I am going to be doing the following: 1. Removing the 2 80GB drives, and replacing with a single SATA 200GB 2. If I'm feeling *very* ambitious, ripping everything out of the case, and carving a blowhole in the top, and mounting a fan up there. 3. Re-installing the OS, and dropping back to Win2K Pro. The reason for pulling everything out to put the blowhole in, is I need to drill into the top, and as it is riveted to the rest of the case, and I don't want to try to figure out how to re-mount it... Lets' just say I want to avoid any flameing power supplies from bits of metal... Thanks, Jason A. FYI, I am currently using my laptop, as I don't want anything on the PC to get "newer" than what I've backed up....
If your going to dill a hole on top then also make 2 on the side. have one blow on the cpu and one on the vid card.
whoa... that sounds..... really really bad, never heard of that before. i was having temperature problems in my old system last year - C&C Generals would crash to desktop with an error message that was unfathomable, but clicking on 'details' was actually helpful for once, and its top suggestion was an overheated graphics card. running a fan (i mean a big one, 2 foot across) in my room (right next to my PC, with the side panel off) fixed the problem immediately so yes, what you have sounds like an overheating (or, hopefully not, broken) graphics card. good luck with the case modding. i'm out shopping for tools and parts tomorrow to put a blow hole in the top of my case too. if i find some acrylic it'll be a top window instead. im also going to mount an 80mm fan in my floppy drive bay (i dont have a floppy drive and the bottom 2 CD bays are empty so theres plenty space) to blow downwards onto my hard drive i'd say definitely put a fan in your side panel. is there room to put one at the back of your case? or get one of those extractors (just a piece of plastic to redirect a fans air). just arrange the fans so you sort of have a circuit of air going - blowing air in and blowing air out, makes it more efficient. also, more fans = more dust sucked into case. so maybe get some filters for the fans
yea i forgot to mention filters. just make sure you clean them every couple of weeks and you will be good. dust is minimal in my case.
Well, for now I've decided to take a pass on trying to put a blowhole in the case... One, I've got too many power supply wires up at the top to keep them out of trouble Two, I really don't feel like trying to pull everything out and then find a safe place to put it. Having two cats and a dog.... What I will do is carve out a hole in my side window, right above the vid card, and put a fan in there, to cool the thing. As far as other fans, I've got two intake fans (now), one at the bottom, and one in a bracket blowing over two of the hard drives. Exhaust fans right now, I've got one, plus the fans in the power supply. The intake fan for the hard drives was "borrowed" from the exhaust fan bracket. My case will normally support two exhaust fans (beyond the PS fans) Right now, I'm re-loading the system, and clean loading Win2K Pro. For some reason I seem to have bad luck with XP and games, but I've had better luck with 2K. Go figure... Thanks, Jason A.
my gfx card also used to over heat with 6 fans in my case while playing bf1942 and i just tuned down the resolution a bit and its good now i think the new 9800pros a crap because my friend also has the same problem with his card
Hrmm.. I'm wondering if it could be a power problem.. Does your vid card have the molex connector on the end of it for extra juice? If so try another plug on it? You could try unplugging unneeded devices for now, CDburners, DVD drives, HDD's, etc.. -scoob8000
I got a 9800 Pro a few days ago and havent had a problem. it runs nice, overclocks well and can play BF1942 and farcry with no problems. BTW the power for it is on its own dedicated rail from the PSU.
Yes, it does have the power connector. I've had it on the same connector for some time now, it only started acting up once the weather started getting hotter. Currently I have an Antec TruePower 550w power supply. As of yesterday, I have dropped one hard drive from the system. We'll see how things go once I finish getting all the basics re-loaded (Mozilla, EasyCD, etc), and start loading the games... Thanks, Jason A.
