heat sink or fan?

[vasanx]

hey you all,
i know this is going to sound stupid but please bear with me. been stuck with GeForce MX 4000 for couple of months now, got bored so i got the FX 5200 from MSI today.

finally i could play Thief: Deadly Shadows!!!

neway, my real question here is this. when i was buying, the guy said it doesn't have a fan. so i got a fan separately and asked the guy to fix it on for me (feel stupid here).

freaked out when he yanked out the heatsink (my 1 yr warranty is void now for that stunt). he tested the card for me with the fan installed, but the fan kept bein' static. so i asked the guy to fix back the heatsink.

1. so what is it with heatsinks and fan?
2. which is better?
3. am i stupid or what for that stunt?
4. can play ThiefS but with Painkiller and Hitman 3, i
can hear the sound but the screen's blank, what's up
with that?
5. could the card get damaged by repeated yanking and re-
inserting of the abovementioned components?
6. last one, promise, when the guy initially installed the
fan, he smeared a white liquid on the GPU. i freaked out
thinking he was gluing the fan onto the GPU. the guy
said it wasn't no glue but to help the surface contact
for the cooling. since i have the heatsink back on,
could this be a potential problem?

i'd truly appreciate if you guys can enlighten me on these issues. thanks a lot.

 

[rx7000]

Your not stupid at all, just because you dont know how to put a fan on a graphics card dont feel bad, everyone has to start out somewhere. However with that said, the guy who just started pulling stuff off just might be....

Heat sinks absorb heat from the card and release it into the air, Fans will either blow on the card to cool it or blow the hot air off. some cards have either or, some have both. Most high power cards have built in fans (Some have ridiculous sized 2 slot cooling systems with venting). The more powerful the card, the more heat it tends to generate hence the more powerful cooling solutions.

I use to have a old tnt2 card that didnt have any cooling, the card got so hot I went to pull it out of the case one day after I shut my comp off and it scalded my hand.

I tend to think a fan is more powerful than the passive heating solutions like heat sinks for cards personally. Passive cards (No fan) are quieter but they arnt going to cool the card as good as a fan at high rpm blasting or sucking air. That goo he smeared on the cpu was (hopefully) thermal paste, this ensures good conduction (convection?) between the heat sink and whats actually creating the heat so the heat will flow to the sink with less resistance. Dont freak out about this, him doing that tells you he at least knows somewhat about what hes doing.

As to certain games not starting, Im going to let someone with more know how answer that one, but my guess is maybe these games require certain shader technology that your card lacks??

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Rx7000 on 11/12/04 08:42 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Nice post.


<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2216718" target="_new"><b>3DMark03</b></A>
<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=127163" target="_new"><b>3DMark05</b></A>

 

[vasanx]

thank you very much for your in-depth reply. i will take this under advicement (President Palmer, 24).

 

[Guest]

Awsome post Rx7000.

As for the games issue have you installed the latest drivers from nvidia please do so, and then tel us what happens.

 

[vasanx]

yes i did. but the fault as it turned out was not with the card but with the display settings.

first i tried lowering from 32 bit to 16 bit but that didn't yield any result. so i thought of lowering the resolution from 800*600 to 640*480 but unbelievably enough
640*480 was no longer available as an option as it was with my previous MX 4000.

as a last ditch effort i tried 1024*780 and walla! i can see the Dreamcatcher logo for Painkiller's intro and Eidos's logo for Hitman 3. the card was a worthy investment after all.

but this brings up new questions.

1. why is it the 640*480 and True Color 24 bit is no longer an option?
2. could this have anything to do with my non-flat, 15", old-ass(1998) crt monitor?


Athlon XP 2200+, MSI K7N2 Delta-L, 256 PC333 DDR, MSI NVidia GeForce FX 5200, Realtek ALC650 6-channel audio, Maxtor 40GB.

 

[rx7000]

It could, but I assume that as monitor size goes up, minimal resolutions disapeer. What options does it give you now for resolutions? As opposed to what it gave you for the last card?

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

 

[RichPLS]

all monitors i know of support vga (640x480) resolution. This is what you get on the bios screen while posting.

<font color=red><pre>\\//__________________________________
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>

 

[rx7000]

Weird problem...

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT