I bought a high-end gaming machine a little over a year ago that came with two NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 graphics cards. A while back I had some issues where in the middle of a game my screen would go rainbow and the computer would crash. Seemed like a graphics card problem to me, but someone suggesting it might be the machine overheating and after some quick checking with Speedfan I learned that I was indeed running hot. I learned that the first thing to try was to open the case and dust, which I did, and discovered a nice dust plug completely blocking the fins of one of the main heat sinks. After removing that, the temp went down to acceptable levels.
However, the rainbow crashes still happen, and with greater frequency. Usually my system will crash within about 5 minutes of starting a game, and I'll have to restart everything once or twice. Curiously, if I can make 15 minutes or so, I rarely get a crash and can play for hours. But something is obviously wrong and I'm guessing its that elevated temp caused permanent damage to my GC.
Ordinarily I'd just order a new GC and replace it. However, I have TWO. I'm not sure if they are both damaged or if only one of them is. My first thought is to try pulling one of them out and seeing if I still get crashes (if I don't that's the damaged one, and if I do I can switch cards and try again). However I don't know if that will confuse my system or not (if it's expecting 2 GCs and suddenly there is only one).
Are thoughts or ideas? I'm quite new at this but not afraid to tinker.
Thanks,
- Ron P.
However, the rainbow crashes still happen, and with greater frequency. Usually my system will crash within about 5 minutes of starting a game, and I'll have to restart everything once or twice. Curiously, if I can make 15 minutes or so, I rarely get a crash and can play for hours. But something is obviously wrong and I'm guessing its that elevated temp caused permanent damage to my GC.
Ordinarily I'd just order a new GC and replace it. However, I have TWO. I'm not sure if they are both damaged or if only one of them is. My first thought is to try pulling one of them out and seeing if I still get crashes (if I don't that's the damaged one, and if I do I can switch cards and try again). However I don't know if that will confuse my system or not (if it's expecting 2 GCs and suddenly there is only one).
Are thoughts or ideas? I'm quite new at this but not afraid to tinker.
Thanks,
- Ron P.