Hi guys,

Problem: When GeForce 3 is put into one of the computers the computer is running extremly hot.

It's a qdi brillianX IV 440BX motherboard, a 2 processor board, has 2 x P3 600mhz 2.05V, Riva TNT 2 AGP 3.3V video card, holywood plus decoder card, soundblaster live card, a 40 gb 3.5 Hard Drive, an LG DVD burner and 3 x 256MB SDRAM 3.3V. (Network card and a scsi card are built into the motherboard)

This system is equiped with a 300W power supply with an auxilliary connector (dual connectors as needed per motherboard). (Please note when this system was built there were 250, 200 and perhaps 150W power supplies in use.)

Anyway this system is running very cool and stable untill I replace the Riva TNT 2 with a GeForce 3 Ti 200. Then the computer overheats. Some of the devices get extremly hot, cpus for example - to hot to touch, the hard drive as well. The system starts crushing.

When put into another computer this Geforce 3 card or even a Geforce 4 card are running okey.
The other computer is a single CPU Pentium III 933mhz. Has a sound blaster live card, a PCI network card, a 40 GB Hard drive, a DVD drive, 3 x 3.3V memory. And is equiped with a 300 W power supply.

I think that I may or may not be experiencing voltage problems with the qdi motherboard - would this be the problem causing the computer to overheat dramatically when with GeForce 3? or is it something else?

Please advice, thanks.

What happens when you put the Geforce 4 in that computer?

It it be that the power supply is going bad?

I don't know but I imagine it would be worse than with GeForce 3.

Sounds to me like it's dropping a LOT more current to the video card in order to make up for voltage drops, measure your power going to your system.

My bet is plain and simple.... A Geforce pumps more heat then a TNT 2 card(and it does take nearly 2x the power or 15 watts more at full load). Since this heat is let off in the case it rises to the cpus and they start with hotter air.....

If i can run a celeron 800 OC'd to 1060mhz with a geforce 2 MX on a 90 watt psu i am sure your 300 is more then enough.....

Try running the case open and see if its better(also feel how hot the card gets)...if it is...consider a PCI slot blower near the video card to suck out some hot air....

Wow thats an old system...

300 watts is plenty of wattage. I would guess this is a socket 370 P3 so u may need to pull off the heatsink and apply some thermal paste u can get a tube for about 10 bucks at your local computer store, or newegg for about the same price after shipping I perfer AC5 but anything should do.

Does it crash with the case open? If it doesen't u need better cooling ie fans, I would try to the thermal paste first.

Well my geforce 4 ti4400 had a heatsink that covered the whole card and it still burnt my hand. Improve your airflow, nukemaster has some good suggestions.