CGTalk - GPU overheating?

Spater

11-04-2005, 01:10 AM

First off I have a Sapphire Radeon 9800 AGP in my computer.

hey guys. This morning I woke up to an odd sight when i turned on my computer.

everything started up normally, then some artifacts started appearing on my LCD monitor. They kept on getting worse and worse until there was nothing on the screen and the computer shut itself down.

I felt the side of the box and it was hot to the touch. I quickly opened it up and took my stand up fan and started cooling off the insides.

10 minutes later it started up fine. I expected windows to give me a message that it recovered from a fatal system error but nothing happened.

after about 5 minutes I shrugged it off and started backing everything I could up just in case.

during the burning process I was browsing CGtalk and the artifacts came back, I made sure not to do so much as move the mouse and my backups finished.

I restarted my computer, everything normal. and the artifacts came back.

I switched out the graphics card to see if it would do anything, lo and behold the computer has been running all day stable, but slow due to the downgrade.

after completley dusting off the faulty card I put it back in to see if the artifacts would come back and they did.

I restarted again, this time with my fan aimed inside of the case. So far so good.

So I have come to the conclusion that the heat sink on the card must be faulty or the card is just simply overheating.

should I go about purchasing a new card?
if the heat sink is replacable how would I go about replacing it?

I'm also leaning towards getting another case fan.

actionman

11-04-2005, 02:16 AM

Those artifact problems are almost certainly due to overheating, but you need to work out exactly what part of the cooling process isn't performing properly.

1) Check the fan on the graphics card is operating properly (ie is on) when computer is running. This is easy to check by leavin the case open while your computer is on.

2) Check your comp + graphics card are getting enough ventillation - sometimes you can have a fan on your graphix card that just pushes the hot air around inside the case without actually venting anything outside. Usually the best way to fix this is to install additional fans at the rear of your case, or possibly consider getting another computer case designed for better ventillation.

3) In regards to ventillation, sometimes having too much wiring in a cluttered mess greatly reduces air flow through the comp. Is this an issue for you?

You should also check what temperatures the GPU is actually reaching when artifacts appear. I think the Radeon drivers might include a util that shows u some info about current and max safe Core temps.

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11-04-2005, 02:16 AM

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