Whats this spot of vid card? burnt?

[elmuchachos]

I have recently bought a projector and been connecting it to computer via vga and in turn taken my monitor count to 4. I have 2 gt220 1gb cards. Before adding the 4th monitor I never had an issue running 3 but now often times my computer will restart while watching a video and other times monitors will stop being detected. I tried switching slots and results are still random, sometimes working sometimes not, currently 3 monitors installed is working but adding a 4th sometimes works for weeks and then sometimes it will shut off repeatedly...then i noticed this spot.

anybody know what it could be?

i have a antec 650w psu

 

[sewalk]

These photos are not detailed or focused enough to provide a clear view of what you are talking about. Set the card on a solid surface to shoot it. You cannot hold it steady enough in your hand to keep it in focus. Get in as close as possible and check that the pictures are as clear as they can possibly be. This is the kind of work many of us do with a jeweler's loupe so your pictures need to be perfect.

 

[Kari]

umm you mean that white spot on the sticker on the cooler? Likely the topmost plastic foil has delaminated itself from the paper.... heat might be the cause. Is the heatsink full of dust?

 

[elmuchachos]

umm you mean that white spot on the sticker on the cooler? Likely the topmost plastic foil has delaminated itself from the paper.... heat might be the cause. Is the heatsink full of dust?

yes thats the spot i was referring to...it was full of dust and was cleaned out when i removed it.

 

[sewalk]

Doh! I'm so old-school. I was looking for burned traces or components on the circuit board. Never dawned on me that the label was the subject at hand.

 

[Kari]

yes thats the spot i was referring to...it was full of dust and was cleaned out when i removed it.

HAve you tried it out how it runs now that it's been cleaned up?


@sewalk yeah I was looking at the board and stuff at first as well. :lol:

 

[elmuchachos]

its been better...one of the monitors did disconnect randomly and it took a reboot for the vid card to see it again but it seems to be running smoother with less hiccups, although ive only been running 3 monitors...is my power supply strong enough to support 4 monitors?

 

[Kari]

is my power supply strong enough to support 4 monitors?

has nothing to do with it really, since monitors are plugged into a wall socket... But for 2 gtx220s it has plenty of power, those cards just sip the power juice with a small straw anyways

You could keep an eye on the gpu temps thou, if it somehow correlates to the hiccups. GPU-z should work fine for 2 card setups
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

 

[elmuchachos]

ok thanks will take a look at that

edit:what exactly am i looking for as far as the temp...is there a certain temp if hitting i should be worried? one is at 51 Celsius while ones at 28 Celsius

 

[Kari]

anything below 90c is still usually safe, generally speaking...

I was just thinking the hiccups might be caused by the card throttling down the clock rates because of high temperatures, and when there're 2 monitors plugged into a card it will use higher clocks (at idle) than with just 1 monitor. And so if the card drops the clocks really low it might disconnect the 2nd monitor as a side effect. This is all a bit of a quesswork though...

I'm further quessing the other card has its heatsink full of dust as well, judging by the temp difference between the 2?

 

[elmuchachos]

anything below 90c is still usually safe, generally speaking...

I was just thinking the hiccups might be caused by the card throttling down the clock rates because of high temperatures, and when there're 2 monitors plugged into a card it will use higher clocks (at idle) than with just 1 monitor. And so if the card drops the clocks really low it might disconnect the 2nd monitor as a side effect. This is all a bit of a quesswork though...

I'm further quessing the other card has its heatsink full of dust as well, judging by the temp difference between the 2?

after having cleaned out both heatsinks, ive noticed not too much of a difference..running only 1 monitor per card the card with the spot in the pic in this thread is running 20c more and the fan speed is only 10% while the other card is running at 50% fan speed.

why the difference in fan speeds?

edit: well took the cards out again and got really aggressive with the air can and got out every last piece of dust and both cards are running around 35c now..however the one card's fan speed stil says 10%

 

[Sunius]

The difference is because the cards suck air from below, one is on top of each other, so the top card is getting cooled with the air which was heated by the bottom card. It's normal for multi-card setup.

 

[elmuchachos]

The difference is because the cards suck air from below, one is on top of each other, so the top card is getting cooled with the air which was heated by the bottom card. It's normal for multi-card setup.

im confused as to how that makes a diff in the fan speeds...not disagreeing with you just dont understand how that affects the speed

 

[Sunius]

im confused as to how that makes a diff in the fan speeds...not disagreeing with you just dont understand how that affects the speed

The speed is tied to the temperature it operates in. Higher temperature = it tries to cool it harder = fan spinning faster. Naturally, the lower card will have lower fan speed because it's so easy to cool compared to upper one.

 

[elmuchachos]

ok gotcha thanks.

 

[Kari]

umm but if both cards are now at 35c, the fan speeds should be pretty darn near the same... The cards are identical, arent they?
It might be reading the speed wrong... maybe.

I'm not too familiar with nvidia control panel, but you might be able to manually force the fan speed up a bit...

 

[elmuchachos]

only difference in cards is one is by pny and one by evga.

i have manually increased the one to 50%