Overheating X800XL?

[Dr_asik]

This afternoon while I was playing Serious Sam the computer suddenly shut down by itself, and then none of my games would play. Everything was graphically slow as when drivers are not running.

I was doing a slight overclock to get my card running at stock speeds, since it is by default clocked a little slower. So I removed the overclock, opened the case and now I am running the computer without the side panel to allow better airflow. Everything is clean inside. I did a lot of video encoding in the last few days, but how could this be relevant?

I have reinstalled the drivers and tonight I played a bit more, but when the video card fan started spinning at 100% I stopped immediatly and put my finger on the metal plate containing the fan: it was almost burning hot.

I have a 120mm fan installed on the front panel, blowing on the hard drive and in the general direction of the video card; but I don't feel much air going through. In fact, most seems to dissipate immediatly outside, through the gap between the fan and the drive bay. I don't know how to open my unused pci slots on the rear of the case, but even then, if removing the entire side panel doesn't cut it, what will do? Is it normal for the metal plates to be very hot? How can I preserve my preciousss video card? Thanks.

 

[SciFiMan]

"very hot" is relative. You could replace your 120mm fan with something moving more air (higher cfm number). Add some copper ram sinks on the video card, and upgrade to an aftermarket heatsink/fan for the card. My son's room is hot (pet bearded dragon) and has the sides off and a small tabletop fan blowing into his case.

 

[Santino]

well if its really hot your could place a 90 or 120 mm fan next to your video card so that it pullls air away from the graphics card, if you have rear exhaust fans, than the hot air beining pushed away from the graphics card will rise and be pulled out the case, you could aslo have the fan pushing air towards the graphics card heatsink and see which one works best.

its a cheap easy trick to reduce temps, i do it with my overclocked x1900gt, and it really helps with getting rid of hot air during heavy gaming.

also make sure the fan is tall enough that it reachs your graphics card when standing it up next to it inside the case.

Hope it helps!

 

[Dr_asik]

Well I just did some monitoring with ATI Tray Tools and under load it tops out ­at 59 degrees Celcius. Is that too hot?

 

[Santino]

actually that isn't too hot, those are pretty normal temps to have on a graphics chip, mines is usally reaches 82 when using the ati tool stress test