Hey all, I think I've been having an overheating graphics card problem. Would you help me?

I have about a 2 year old HP Media Center PC m7680n. Since I've had it, I've gotten the fans replaced and recently replaced the graphics card. It's original graphics card was a Nvidia GeForce 7300 LE video card (256 MB shared). It was replaced with this card: VGA ASUS N EN7300GT SILENT/HTD/256M.

Everything was going great with the new upgrade until it decided to randomly reboot on me one day. No BSOD, just a random reboot. Screen went black for a second, started up again, and went right back to the desktop as if I just turned the PC on. I checked my computer's history or whatever and found a save dump there. I tried installing the debugging program for windows, but I wasn't able to get it to work. (Regardless, I suppose this is irrelevant to the problem. )

Anyway, I noticed with speedfan that it said a "Core" was getting around 65-75 C after usage. My computer is a Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, so it has two cores. These core readings for the CPU are as labeled Core 0 and Core 1. Upon some website searching, I found that the "Core" value that appears for this model (as in Core no number, not Core 0 or 1) is the heat of the graphics card. So going on a hunch, I checked my NVIDIA control Panel's temperature levels for my graphics card.

Ah ha! A match. The graphics card value is the same as my "Core" value on Speedfan.

So the conclusion I've come to is...Well, this card might be overheating.

If this is the case, how am I to address this problem?

Thanks,

TTC

Not my cup of tea (what is?)...but I guess that I generally understood video cards to run hotter than CPUs when used.

Related reading: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/171024-3...ard-temperature

DaChew and others knows a lot more about GPUs (and everything else) than I do, so wait for some inputs from those more knowledgeable .

Louis

***Not one of the more knowledgable guy he was talking about***

The problem with telling you what you can do is that your card has a massive heatsink yes, but no direct air cooling the heatsink so its not able to do its job and absorb the heat coming off your GPU. If it had a crappy fan on it it would be as easy as saying get a zalman, slap it on, problem solved but thats the problem with silent.

I would think about adding more cooling. Just going to tell you what i did. First thing was to add a VGA cooler. namely this one http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...&lid=627063 that dropped it 4-7 degrees C. Still wasn't cool enough for my taste so i dremeled out a spot directly above my card and stuck a case fan in there since my case didn't have a spot for one. that dropped it another 7-9C

Tho tbh 65 is pretty tolerable under load. 75 not so much.

Thank you for the replies so far. They've helped a little. : )

I now understand that graphic cards generally run hotter than the rest of the system...But I'm still rather concerned about the graphics card itself. I looked at its position in the tower, and it seems to be placed quite a bit lower than the cpu cooling fan. There's no other fans besides the fan in the back that are able to assist with keeping the unit cooled down (well asides from the psu's fan, but that's irrelevant in this case.)

I looked further into the graphics card I have, and found out that it is prone to heat causing problems if there's: (a) not a fan positioned near it or if (b) the pc casing doesn't have good air flow. I'm using the standard HP media center m7680n's casing at the moment. It hasn't given me any issues in the past, but then again I was using a weaker graphics card that had a fan to keep it cool in the past... D:

So I'm definitely thinking of getting a cooling unit to place near the graphics card as smurf suggested.

Questions:
1. If I do go with another cooling unit within my tower, should I get a better PSU as well? I don't know how much my current PSU can handle but I know its pretty obsolete. It's only a 300W PSU; the one that came with the computer when I got it two years ago.

2. Should I really consider getting a different case? It's somewhat big, but I suppose all the contraptions inside take up a lot of room. I'm concerned about whether another cooling unit would be able to fit in there or not.

If possible, run it without the side on and a fan pointed at it and see if it makes a difference. If it improves, you know you have airflow problems. don't forget that cable routing can impede airflow

There are some REALLY nice full towers out there nowdays, if you decide to go that route. bigger area would mean more room for cable routing and more room to upgrade, Just make sure it fits your motherboard (ATX, micro-ATX, BTX etc) the tray could be modded of course but why go through all that trouble if you don't have to. If you buy one, and have room to fit it in your desk or whatever you're doing then go for it.

There is a wattage calculator http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html that gives a good estimate on what you should have to power it. It doesn't take fans into the equation tho, so leave some leeway room there. This is just a personal reccomendation if you do get another supply, I would get one that has fans in front and back instead of back and top or bottom. Of course my CPU heatsink has a humongous cone on it right now that completely blocks airflow from the inside supply fan, so maybe i'm just biased, but shop around and think about what you really need.

Let me get something straitened out. You only had this happen once. Everything is still in working order? That's what I got out of you're first post and that your just concerned about overheating?



1, I'd really doubt a couple of fans would put much strain on your power supply. The GeForce 7300Gt will only use like 10-13 watts anyway during idle and 13-20 on load. Unless you plan on adding alot new stuff ( ie. extra Hardrive, a video card that eats up alot, SLI, etc. ) I wouldn't worry.

2, Most cases are pretty much the same. I don't see much wrong with your case, it should be fine as long as it doesn't bother you.

Any further questions, just ask. I don't think theres any stupid questions you could ask.

It's only randomly rebooted once. The temperatures of the graphics card are still ranging from 65C-75 C. Right now after a couple hours of useage, its at 74C. I was told that random rebooting can be caused by overheating in the machine, which is why I'm concerned about the graphic card temperature.

/edit: I don't think anything else in the machine has questionable temperature values... @_@ Which is why I'm focusing on the matter of the graphics card temperature.

1. Ok. : ) I was thinking of getting a small vga cooler and place it near the card, like one of the people in here suggested.
2. Oh? well ok.

When a computer suddenly shuts down with no warning, I suspect a power supply or CPU, not a video card overheating. The 2 video overheating problems that I ever had, showed weird distorted images, but never blacked out and stayed off. Of course, I don't overclock or anything like that

Update on situation:

I know there is a problem with the card now, since the card has now gone up to at most 84 C during useage. Although this card can handle up to 100 C, I've looked up the issue in other forums and it seems that normal temperature during useage should only be around most 50-65ish C. Recomended procedures to address the problem are to check the heatsink to make sure its fastened, possibly consider adding in another fan, or getting a different computer case for the computer.

I will be getting a pc technician to come over and look at the card, (to check the heatsink, etc) as I do not feel comfortable tampering with it on my own. For the meanwhile, I'm going to take the side panel off of the tower and see if that effects the heat values at all in the computer. If it does, I'll know that there is merely heat problems inside of the computer due to too much heat and too little ventilation and/or cooling.

Although I do have one question.

When I talked to a PC technician about installing another cooling unit, he said that it may be a bad idea as there might be not enough room in the case for another cooling unit. He has yet to look into its insides...But I am now a bit unsure myself as if my computer's tower case could fit in another cooling unit. I have a picture of my computer's internals prior to the switch that was done with the graphic cards. Asides from that detail, everything in that tower now is the same as it was during the time the picture was taken.

Question: I have a picture of my computer's insides here: http://i32.tinypic.com/160zjg1.png
Does it really look like if it could fit in another cooling unit? What about that VGA cooler someone in this thread mentioned?
Is there any alternative solutions I could look into to address this problem?

Well the problem with the VGA cooler i posted is that it takes up 2 PCI slots worth of space. You could theoretically bump your PCI card down to the bottom slot and use it but it will be extremely cramped. You "may" be able to fit an 80mm fan onto the side panel, but with the wires where they are in relation to the heatsink it might not work, even if it would fit depth-wise it may run into the wires width wise. any bigger fan is certainly out of the question. By the looks of things i'd say you have 3 options. First one is get a different card with active cooling (a fan) second is a different case, you said it was cramped but cripes. The third option i see is do what mark said before run with the side off and get a decently powered box fan to blow into your case. I found a really loud but extremely powerful tabletop fan at walmart for like 20 bucks from Massey size and strengthwise it would be ideal but any would do better than nothing. That's just my take on it, take it for what you will.

Lol. I figured it was a wee bit crowded in there.

Well, I'm running it with the side off now. I'll get a fan later today to place near it; I don't mind if its noisy because I barely pay attention to noises anyway when playing a game, lol. What size of box fan is ideal to use for the computer? If I get a fan that blows in air fast with a bit of pressure, would it be of any issue to my machine?

I'll probably just end up getting a different graphics card for it as well. I'm starting to think that's inevitable...As I don't want to spend $200+ on a new computer case. Question, do you guys know of any decent graphic cards that are okay to use with a 300W PSU? I know my PSU is extremely obsolete and that all the newest graphic cards need at least 500W-600W PSU...And seeing that I'm saving up for a new computer, I'd really not want to get a bunch of upgrades onto this one since once I get the new one I'm not going to be using this one. I'm not looking for one of those awesome new graphics cards, but I would like one that doesn't lower much of the quality of graphics that I have now & is a GeForce.