VGA cooling woes.

[DaveB]

Vacuum Cleaner? Static. You'll only get away with that for so long.

Use compressed air and blow out the fluff. Far more effective and doesn't cook the <FZZT!> <CRACK!> components.

And you'll kick yourself when you suck off some jumpers and don't know how many, or where from!

Never had that problem with a PC, but I usually use a soft paintbrush and brush all the crap loose inside the case and use the vacuum to hoik it out without getting it too close to the components. Leave the pc plugged into the mains with the power off at the socket and you keep it earthed which also helps.

I did try it once with an old HP LJIII that had shat toner all over the inside of the case. That created visible sparks!

[RichardCranium]

Get the dyson on it.

It's amazing the amount of fluff that gets stuck in the vents.

Vacuum Cleaner? Static. You'll only get away with that for so long.

Use compressed air and blow out the fluff. Far more effective and doesn't cook the <FZZT!> <CRACK!> components.

And you'll kick yourself when you suck off some jumpers and don't know how many, or where from!

[Pondlife]

Get the dyson on it.

It's amazing the amount of fluff that gets stuck in the vents.

[Fred Bloggs]

All good suggestions above, I've also seen the fans slowed down by accumulated fluff too.

[DSW]

I've got a 4870 in my machine, its one of the gainward golden samples, so it has better cooling, but it gets a pasting sometimes as well (and always copes). Its quite effective at warming the room up!

I also have a lot of hard drives and other stuff in there, but ventilation is brilliant, my point is I dont think it should be overheating.

is it overheating in games, or just when its idle - they all have variable fan speed, but you should be able to override this from the control center ( its in the overclocking section). You know when they are on full blast as they make a hell of a racket!

also make sure you have the latest drivers (9.6 is the latest)

[DaveB]

Make sure all the vents in the case are clear of fluff and dust, including the intakes for the PSU. If there is poor airflow going into the case to begin with then it will over heat.

90% of heat related problems I used to deal with in my desktop support days were due to blocked vents on the case or excessive crud inside.

[pzz76077]

You cold also try using speedfan to see if all your fans are working correctly and also get an indication of temperature in various parts of the PC and also use it to monitor voltages present.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

PZZ

[Fred Bloggs]

I'd run the PC with the side off to see if it is genuinely overheating or not first of all. It should not overheat with the side off. HTH.

[xchaotic]

Steps you can take:

0. Clean up the cables inside the case, tie them up etc, so that the air can flow freely inside the case.
1. Install additional case fans - big one (120mm) but low rpm to keep em quiet.
2. Install an aftermarket VGA cooler with loads of heatpipes and possibly vapour cooling.
3. Install a better Power Supply - it should provide a more stable voltage, and possibly a beter airfolow in the case.

as an interim measure, just take a side off, also ensure that the thing is not crammed somewhere between a desk and a cupboard - you need to let the hot air get out somewhere...

[pzz76077]

Water cooling: http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/catalog/

PZZ

[Svalbaard]

I recently upgraded my home PC and that upgrade included an ATI HD4870 graphics card.

The card itself has a huge great fan on it, and the case is fairly large and also has two fairly big fans running at front and rear to provide additional cooling airflow.

Unfortunately, the graphics card keeps shutting down the PC. Upon reboot the ATI error log that gets added by the driver software says that it was shut down due to the graphics card overheating.

Was wondering if anyone had any ideas how I could provide additional cooling to either the case or card to stop this happening.

Thanks.