Fiery flaming VGA death, need some help plskthx.

[AFree]

I think my graphics card fan might be failing? And I'm not overclocking or even trying to overclock, but I'm posting here since the overclock crowd might be more knowledgeable. You guys live by heat control, right?

I'll play SL on the LOWEST settings possible, everything derendered, and it shoots up to 80c. I've cleaned the fans and rather than it idling on 70, it idles on 64/65, but during game play, I'm still seeing way too much heat on super low settings and I'm a merchant, and I make real money, and I can't get on SL to make that money. $#&@*!%. If I wanted anything above crappy graphics it'd probably go to 100c and my computer would explode.
Plus it's summer, and it gets warm in my room, so I can only get on for maybe an hour in the evenings. I'm just really at my wits end, ready to kill myself and everything around me, etc.

I have an nVidia Quadro FX "3400/4400" that reports most often as a 3400. The chipset for the 3400 I believe is the same as the GeForce 6800. I also have a Dell Workstation 360, and can pretty much give any and all information specs-wise to hardware if needed.
Let me stress first and foremost I don't MOD things. I've been traumatized by horrid experiences with pc's in the past, so I prefer to touch them as little as possible, especially since I'm dirt poor and can't afford to risk my current PC. I've posted about the heat on the nVidia forums and someone told me to take a hacksaw and drill to my case. omfg, are you crazy, no.

I don't know the best way to cool my VGA. I don't know anything about cooling my VGA. Ideally, I'd like to just slip a fan of some sort into the PCI underneath it and hook it up, which allows me to touch as little as possible. But then there's all this stuff about exhaust and front air flow and brain meltyness. I know there's a lot of options for PCI slot cooling on newegg but I don't know what the puck I'm doing so if someone with infinite wisdom could share that infinite wisdom with me, I'd be eternally grateful.

Here's several pics from inside my case of that general area from my fan cleaning escapade a couple weeks ago, took them in case I might need them. There might be some hardware bits you guys need to know about to be able to help, so doesn't hurt to include.

http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001309-98.jpg
http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001298-95.jpg
http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001300-90.jpg
http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001299-57.jpg
http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001301-62.jpg
http://www.upl.co/uploads/1001297-66.jpg

 

[baddad]

Are your case fans working?

 

[AFree]

Are your case fans working?

Yep. Everything else is optimal temperature. All temperatures range between 32-51c consistently. My Western Digital even runs a few degrees below normal for the model. It's just the graphics card that's burning up like a vat of frying oil with barely any load.

 

[dhicks19]

1) increase your case air flow - add more fans
2) Download a program that will allow you to turn the fan speed up on the graphics card. Being a quadro, i am unsure which one, do a search.
3) You could take the heatsink off the GFX card and clean the old rubbish thermal paste off and apply some high quality silver paste such as Artic silver 5 or the like.

If all else fails attach a rather large deskfan to the side of your case. Or get some air con in your room lol

 

[dhicks19]

try rivatuner to turn fan speed up

 

[AFree]

1) increase your case air flow - add more fans
2) Download a program that will allow you to turn the fan speed up on the graphics card. Being a quadro, i am unsure which one, do a search.
3) You could take the heatsink off the GFX card and clean the old rubbish thermal paste off and apply some high quality silver paste such as Artic silver 5 or the like.

If all else fails attach a rather large deskfan to the side of your case. Or get some air con in your room lol

I wouldn't mind adding more fans, my interest is just in one in the PCI area if at all possible. But I don't know what fans I should be looking for, what would work best, etc.
I have speedfan but have never gotten it to work, I just use it to monitor temperatures. I'll try rivatuner.

Last option would be modding, and honestly, I'd rather just get a new graphics card than start messing with that. hahaha. The card I have, I mean, it's not exactly right up there on the line as far as I know.

 

[misry]

Have you replaced the thermal paste between the fan and the GPU? That has an expiry date you know.

 

[dhicks19]

I wouldn't mind adding more fans, my interest is just in one in the PCI area if at all possible. But I don't know what fans I should be looking for, what would work best, etc.
I have speedfan but have never gotten it to work, I just use it to monitor temperatures. I'll try rivatuner.

Last option would be modding, and honestly, I'd rather just get a new graphics card than start messing with that. hahaha. The card I have, I mean, it's not exactly right up there on the line as far as I know.

first try rivatuner to manually turn the fan speed , set it at 100% and see what temps you get then, you can then adjust accordingly, as stated before, you can also try replacing the thermal paste by removing the graphics heat sink.

Cheers mate, let me know how rivatuner goes

 

[AFree]

Thanks for the tips. I at first wanted to just adjust the fan speed for gameplay but there's not a whole lot of documentation on the particular card I have. And Speedfan didn't work and I gave up at the prospect of having to go fight with the BIOS.

Hope Rivatuner works. If not, I'll look more into the thermal paste. I've almost had this PC for 2 years so this crap just keeps taking me by surprise.

 

[dhicks19]

there will be a way to turn up the fan speed somehow which is the simplest of all options.

 

[AFree]

there will be a way to turn up the fan speed somehow which is the simplest of all options.

Tried Rivatuner now and set the fans to 100%, overclocked on the highest settings that I would be using and it performed really well. On the settings I used it would usually be reaching 85-87c if not more, but stayed around 76c with the fan on 100% on those high settings. That was awesome. Fan was a bit louder but not distractingly so.
Fan was only working at 50%, so no wonder.

Thank you! This will definitely get me through the daytime hours through summer.

When using Rivatuner is there anything else I should be aware of, precautions or anything?

 

[AFree]

Best answer selected by AFree.

 

[dhicks19]

glad it solved your prob, if you would further like your temps down, replace the thermal paste on the gpu with AS5 or similar.

As long as you aint changing voltages or anything like that then its straight forward.

Happy computing lol