A question on stability of E8600 and XFX GTX 260 B Ed.

FadeAway_85

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Feb 13, 2009
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Hey guys,

I recently upgraded my CPU and VGU to E8600 and XFX GTX 260 Black Edition. I am using these on 680i motherboard in Antec 180P case, with 650W power supply. The upgrade has been great, and I am really enjoying my computer's power to run games like Crysis/Warhead in 1600X1200 Enthusiast setting (I don't know about FPS...but I played Warhead for four hours and it was VERY playable).

However, I am also wondering if something is wrong here. Yesterday, when I was trying the last mission of Crysis, things got very intense on the graphic and my computer crashed. I had no idea what happened (and I still don't know for sure), but after searching and reading, I came to surmise that because the card was set to run fan at 40%, the card overheated and crashed. So I downloaded RivaTuner and set the fan to 100% now, and all games have been working very well since then. Still, I am a bit worried if same thing can happen again because the XFX card is overclocked beyond its stable configuration. I am really pleased with this setting, but I am planning on holding on this system with no upgrade at all for next 2+ years.

When I ran games like Crysis, Far Cry, Warhead, Fear 2, the highest temperature my GPU got was about 71-73 celcius at 100% fan setting. My E8600 CPU's temp got close to mid 60. I got these values when I was playing Crysis at the last mission with 1600X1200 Very High + 4AA and the same setting in Warhead. My question to you all is whether or not this is normal, and whether or not I should perhaps return the GPU and get something more stable like EVGA GTX 260. The truth is, getting a 280 would be an overkill for me, but I heard that GTX 260, regardless of the brand, has same heating issue.

I guess I am a bit excessively worried. However, I know XFX is not really well known for customer support when things go down, and I just don't want to be strangled after couple of months because my card suddenly died on me. I read many stores about XFX GTX 260 Black Edition dying suddenly because of heating issue.

Should I just get an additional cooling solution for the card/or the whole case in general, or is there any better card I could exchange my XFX 260 with, and have better stability? Sorry for being a bit long on the explaining. I am really ignorant with many of these things, so any explanation would be helpful.
 
Those are normal temperatures.
If the overclock is not stable, correct the overclock.

NVIDIA nForce 680i Chipset Problems

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI0NCwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==