Overheating Problem

N

Not Bman

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So the past week I started to have a weird problem.

Basically after awhile, any video (normally, as far as I have noticed, with video) I watch will start to get lines going through it and weird crap, making it unwatchable. Once I close down the program playing the video either the computer freezes and I have to restart, or the screen goes black, almost like the monitor loses connection.

I have been watching it and the majority, except 2 times, it only does it awhile after running the computer.

It just did it again, but before I got to restart the computer I got a blue screen, saying the normal hardware failure. Now as some of you know I said my videocard runs quite hot, I have only read temperatures at the highest 88 degress C, which Nvidia says it runs 90 to 100 without problems. Though touching the card can seriously burn my hand, and nothing else makes sense to this problem.

Now in another thread I was asking about where I could get some parts to mod my videocard, a cool heatsink and such which brings it down in temp by ALOT, just can't find the place to get the certain parts. Anyways, I do not have money or time to get those things right now, so I am wondering if anyone has any ideas of what I could do right now to help prevent it from doing it? Or maybe another idea of what this problem could be if not my videocard..

Thanks.
 
How about underclocking it? I know this wouldn't be your first choice if you're a hardcore gamer, but it seems like that can solve the problem.
 
Some possibilities:

1) larger heatsink & fan 80mm or bigger for graphics card (as recommended to you already) optionally you can invest in inexpensive memory module cooling heatsinks to improve cooling on the graphics card

2) air flow in the case (you don't want a vacuum nor do you want turbulance, you want air flowing through your case)
a. be aware of the hot areas of your case, hard drives, cpu, psu, gpu, RAM, north/south bridges or chipset, mosfets
b. focus on cooling these problem areas and create a balance of air inside your case

3) new case if above is not possible (120mm fans in front and back are nice, quiet and lots of air flow, but don't over power intake or exhaust fans, equal pressure is ideal, whatever air you remove via exhaust should be replaced via intake)

4) some higher end motherboards provide far supierior cooling to the less obvious problem areas such as mosfets and chipset cooling, these impact other components such as the graphics card and affects the temperatures of the case

* an interesting story: I had a computer come in that was having heat issues. After taking readings with an external thermostat I determined that the northbridge of this particular stock motherboard was overheating in excess of 80 degrees. Approaching oblivion. The cause was the fancy water cooling solution which eliminated the CPU cooler with a passive block which gave wonderful CPU temperatures, but reduced the cooling capabilities of other vital components that relied on the CPU fan to exhaust heat, such as the MOSFETS, RAM, and of course the northbridge in this case.

5) good power supply (better cooling options, more efficient, quieter, reduces strain on all other components)

6) ambient temperatures (the temperature of the room your computer sits in has a great effect on the time it will take the computer to heat up, and the sustained temperatures) if you can cool the room the computer will run cooler too
 
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have you removed the heatsink to see if the thermal paste has baked so hard its now an insulator ?
 
I know you said you overclocked your computer to 3 GHz from 2.4. Does the problem go away if you go back down to 2.4? If so you might need to find a happy medium overclocking setting.

For the heatsink, the post I just left here applies to video as well:

At http://www.newegg.com in the Search box type "chipset heatsink" without the quotes. Search this list for "VGA".

I would recommend a copper heatsink if you're going to get one at all, but don't let it stop you if the kind you want isn't available in copper but only aluminum.
 
LOL Carpo.

Yes, it can cause a lot of problems. Sometimes things work fine until you play some game or something else intensive and then you start experiencing weird issues. I only overclock by a small amount but sometimes in the past when still experimenting with how high I could go, by the time I had a problem I would forget that I overclocked and it would take me a while to remember to try reducing the frequency a notch at a time until the problem went away.
 
Ah I forgot to add one main point, this problem was already begun before I overclocked. It just seems to be more often and such once I overclocked, which is why I believe its the Videocard itself, just the overclocked CPU adds a bit more heat to the whole problem.

I know what to buy and what I can do to take down the heat to good temps, I was just asking if anyone thought it might be something else wrong, and or what else I can do temporally before I get my new aftermarket parts.
 
I think heatsinks/fans for the MCP and video are worth trying, but I know you said you don't have the time and money right now.

What are you doing when it freezes? When it happens, is it always when playing a video? If so what media player? Do you have a bunch of codecs installed? Sometimes codecs can conflict and cause problems although I wouldn't expect overheating or freezing up, so this probably isn't too likely the solution.
 
Yea only with video playing, im assuming if i was playing a game it would do the same. It has happened with more then 1 media player so its not the players or codecs. The only thing I don't understand about it being the heat is that this card was 100% fine in my old system, yes the old system had watercooled cpu and was bigger and silver, but should still run the same correct?
 
Well any overclock can cause lockups , and running video's cause the stress levels to rise , I would start by setting your cpu back to norm and see if that makes any difference, its not like you cant overclock again later eh ... another thing about overclocking to be 100% sure about your overclock you need to test it at high stress for a few hours with something like Prime95

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=103

If you cant run the stress test for at least 2 hours I would say 6 hours your over clock is not stable ...


Usually Prime95 will detect an error within a matter of minutes if an overclock is not stable, however many people like to let the system "burn-in" overnight to ensure long-term stability
 
If the condition is worse since you overclocked then you do not have good enough case cooling. I have the 8800GT and my temps for the card are around 50 to 60 Celsius when playing games. My case temp is around 27 to 28. If I block my front case fan or allow it to get too dirty then the case temp goes up and the video card temp will go up as well to about 80-90.
 
Holy crap, 50 or 60! Actually the front of my case where a 120MM fan is suppose to be, there is nothing there, I had issues getting the fan in there and plugging it in so I gave up, I didn't think it would of made that much of an issue. You think if i put that in there it will drop that many degrees?
 
The more fans the better. :) My old home-built computers are loud. Bigger fans are better than smaller ones, however, because they move more air than a smaller fan all other things being equal (such as if they run at the same speed). Therefore they can run slower and make less noise than a smaller fan in order to move the same amount of air.

I'm a believer in the positive case pressure debate, which means that you should have more air being drawn into the case than being pulled out of the case. Besides believing that a front case fan is a must if possible, having a fan both on the side of the case blowing in and on top of the case blowing out I think makes a huge difference.

I really don't mod cases, but I look for cases that have as many 120mm (or larger) fan spots as possible in at least those three spots plus the rear.

You said this computer is only several weeks old, right? Is it a brand name or home-built by anyone? If it's a brand name and you're having these troubles this early on I would be tempted to complain to the company who manufactured it.

Although overclocking and trying (or actually succeeding) to install additional fans probably void your warranty, but just set things back to the way they were before you take it back if you pursue such an avenue.

If you try adding heatsinks/fans and standalone fans, I would change the clock back to normal of 2.4 GHz because you might find that at the rated speed, all is solved with the additional heat removal, but at 3 GHz that the problem still exists.

Once you solved the problem at 2.4 GHz, then try overclocking and see if the problem starts again due to the additional heat and stress. Like I said, I've never been able to overclock by 600 MHz myself, although I know others do and have. I usually don't buy the most primo motherboard so my overclocking options are usually limited.

But especially by only increasing the FSB, even then I've never personally heard of someone successfully overclocking a system by that much although I'm hardly the expert on the subject. Usually to really overclock a system by such a significant amount involves increasing voltages, sometimes decreasing timings on the RAM (to make up at least partially the fact that the RAM speed is sometimes or perhaps always - I forget - tied to the same FSB setting) and the RAM might not be able to run at the increased FSB at the same low timings that it could at the correct FSB.

Sometimes expert overclockers in the past have even had to resort to modifying hardware in their computers - even the CPUs themselves although I'm guessing that might be a thing of the past with the built-in heatsinks of CPUs normally covering the entire CPU top and hiding some otherwise accessible electrical links that could be severed or modified to enable a higher speed; although I haven't done this method as it's not usually worth the risk to me since it's so dangerous.

As a side note, whenever I build a new computer or repair a computer of someone else's, I use thick but pourous (sp?) filter material in all air INTAKE spots except for the CPU of course. That means filter material before the front fan(s), before the power supply fan(s) and before the side fan(s). I do not want to filter the air being blown out as although it will make the system quieter, it will also help keep what dust and dirt still gets in the system from being blown out, and I want to encourage it being blown out! :)

I use wet/dry vacuum (shop vac) cylindrical filter material that I cut to size. I always keep some on hand here at home.

While these get clogged with dirt eventually, it's much easier (and cheaper) to clean these with water than to buy expensive compressed air cans that:

1. Can take quite a lot of air to thoroughly clean one computer.

2. Unless the can says it's guaranteed not to blow any water/water vapor out as well, you could be blowing water inside your computer.

Before I put filter material in a computer I'm repairing, I completely disassemble the computer and physically wash the non-electric parts with water in the sink or bathtub and let them dry completely. I also use electical Contact Cleaner (plastic safe) on the electronic parts.

Some computers I've repaired were not working solely because of the dirt buildup and clogged fans, even the CPU fan.

Sorry about the long response! :D
 
Now I didn't read all of that because I'm lazy lol but thanks, great detail.

So I added the 120MM fan to the front of the case, and added the small fan that goes onto my motherboards heatsink (came with it, but i didnt put it on). The videocard went from being an average of 80 to 90 Degress C, to so far max 64DegreesC, and the motherboard went down a few degrees as well. Now it seems to be going up and up, now at 67, so its not like you said gaming at 60 max, if i do a game right now i bet it will reach 80 again. But the fan did help TONS. I didn't except it to drop that much, but lets hope that was the cause of the problem. I am still going to mod my videocard and add extra aftermarket heatsinks and fans to MB, Videocard and CPU, but for now I think it's good.

Thanks to all of you. I will let you know if the problem continues.

*EDIT, oh and I belive you asked if it's self built or made by a company, I made it myself, it's not the greatest case, it's the Cooler Master Elite case, was about 50 bucks, quick and easy.
 
Now I didn't read all of that because I'm lazy lol but thanks, great detail.

I expected that and hold no grudge. LOL.

So I added the 120MM fan to the front of the case, and added the small fan that goes onto my motherboards heatsink (came with it, but i didnt put it on). The videocard went from being an average of 80 to 90 Degress C, to so far max 64DegreesC, and the motherboard went down a few degrees as well. Now it seems to be going up and up, now at 67, so its not like you said gaming at 60 max, if i do a game right now i bet it will reach 80 again. But the fan did help TONS. I didn't except it to drop that much, but lets hope that was the cause of the problem. I am still going to mod my videocard and add extra aftermarket heatsinks and fans to MB, Videocard and CPU, but for now I think it's good.

Thanks to all of you. I will let you know if the problem continues.

Wonderful to hear! That's the best news I've heard from anyone all day (besides learning that I do have work tomorrow and that my cold is becoming bearable so that I can be there).

*EDIT, oh and I belive you asked if it's self built or made by a company, I made it myself, it's not the greatest case, it's the Cooler Master Elite case, was about 50 bucks, quick and easy.

In the end I normally spend about $50 on a case as well any more, although that is for other people's computers that I build as I haven't had to buy a new case for myself in about five years. I've lucked out and come into many used parts; even cases that are borderline useable enough that I can't justify buying a new one, and that's what I did with my one recent new computer.
 
In the end I normally spend about $50 on a case as well any more, although that is for other people's computers that I build as I haven't had to buy a new case for myself in about five years. I've lucked out and come into many used parts; even cases that are borderline useable enough that I can't justify buying a new one, and that's what I did with my one recent new computer.

The case that I really want is $250 or so lol, but yea cases should not be that expensive. haha, and untill I get my new aftermarket parts, I am actually using a fan (like for humans lol) and blowing it into the case, it droped it so far another 5 degrees lol
 
Yeah, I've seen cases that were as near to my personal case preferences as possible that were multi-hundreds of dollars. Sigh. Just as soon as I win the lottery that I don't play. :(

I've made up a list of a dozen or so criteria that describe my ideal computer case, but I haven't found a single case yet that matches them all. Hard to believe considering the 'leet cases that are available.

LOL re: human fan.

15 years ago when I used a Commodore Amiga 500 with an external RAM expansion, in the summer (no air conditioning) I used to have to remove the cover to the RAM expansion to let more air flow otherwise I'd have problems. Unfortunately that's probably also why my RAM eventually fried (due to being easily exposed to static).
 
Yeah, I've seen cases that were as near to my personal case preferences as possible that were multi-hundreds of dollars. Sigh. Just as soon as I win the lottery that I don't play. :(

I've made up a list of a dozen or so criteria that describe my ideal computer case, but I haven't found a single case yet that matches them all. Hard to believe considering the 'leet cases that are available.

LOL re: human fan.

15 years ago when I used a Commodore Amiga 500 with an external RAM expansion, in the summer (no air conditioning) I used to have to remove the cover to the RAM expansion to let more air flow otherwise I'd have problems. Unfortunately that's probably also why my RAM eventually fried (due to being easily exposed to static).


Yea I don't need the fan blowing on the case, but the videocard temp is down from 88 to 64 already, pretty sweet!
 

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