SPCR

Hi Folks,

I just bought a ZOTAC GeForce GT 640 ZONE Edition fanless GPU.

It's a card that was not reviewed well by SPCR. It was said to run over 100° C. when given a torture test.

ZOTAC GeForce GT 640 ZONE Edition fanless GPU review by SPCR, September 2012

My system contains one exhaust fan 92mm running at low speed unless the CPU heats up.
It contains one intake fan 80mm running at low speed.
The CPU heatsink is a Scythe Ninja2 with 120mm fan running at ~750 rpm.
The PSU is a Tagan 330W with 2x 80mm in push-pull.

The only thing that sets my system apart is that the CPU fan is located straight above the graphics card.



ZOTAC modified the card as was reviewed. The heatsink is now smaller and no longer runs across the back. Also it just contains 2 heatpipes instead of 3.
Strange thing is the heatsink still contains holes for a 3rd heatpipe. Seems they have been cutting production costs on this unit.



I bought the card precisely because it had a heatsink on the back. Bummer.

I'm running a FurMark Burn-in test, these are my results, case closed:

00:00 38°
03:00 56°
06:00 61°
09:00 64°
12:00 65°
15:00 65°

After 16 minutes I add Prime95 torture test for the CPU. Exhaust fan ramps up to 1400 rpm.

20:00 cpu: 55°, gpu: 65°
30:00 cpu: 58°, gpu: 65°

When I first ran the FurMark test for a long time, Windows shut down suddenly to "protect the system". I can only assume it was a hardware instability.
My harddisk ran quite hot and SMART doesn't seem to work on it, so I took the liberty of removing a 5.25" front plate to give it some air.

Still, I can't get this GPU to exceed 65 degrees.

from the SPCR article,

The cooler is nothing special, not overly large or particularly clever or effective. It requires a good amount of airflow to keep the GPU adequately cool, barely managing a core load temperature under 100°C in our torture test with two case fans running at quiet levels.

where is the intake for this case?
you might need to do some ducting to get enough airflow over that HS. have you tried just taking out the pci slot covers for the unused slots below it, and seeing if that helps?

Are you asking that of me?

My temps are fine, I don't need to change anything.

oops. i thought you were worried cause of the windows shutdown.

well I am a slight bit because my Windows XP installation NEVER crashed unless some game decided to hang everything.

but I hardly doubt it has anything to do with GPU temps. SPCR reported temperatures of over 100 degrees with no instability.

actually, the system shut me down the very instant I was extracting a file from a RAR archive.
so, if anything, I want my harddisk to remain cool.

i didn't have the money for an SSD so I took a Samsung Spinpoint F1 that was sitting in an external enclosure and put it in my case with a Nexus DiskTwin (silly attempt at vibration dampening). The harddisk was getting quite hot. Cooler than the gpu heatsink at 65° but it was probably at 45°-50° or something like that. I cannot get SMART readouts I do not know why. There is no airflow in that part of the case. When I remove the front plate sitting in front of the 5.25" bracket, there is quite a stream of air going into the case. So, I think I'll go and drill some holes in that front plate and hope that helps enough.

Just FYI, HDDs like to be in the 40C-50C range.

Right. It was getting hot to the touch though.