How hot should a passive video card get?

They make noise, too.

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autoboy
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How hot should a passive video card get?

Post by autoboy » Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:17 pm

I bought a new nsk2400 case and i'm really loving it. However, my 7300LE that I picked up is running really hot. I powered up the system and by the time I got around to checking the video card temp (20min) It was sitting stable at 77C. The throttle temperature is 130C but I was getting artifacts while watching a DVD. I reseated the heatsink and it took the temp down to 74C. Not much help. I played with the airflow in the case, removed the pci slot covers all the way (they are normally vented anyways) and blocked the air from going over the card where it would miss the heatsink. I also turned up the exhast fan to blow more air. It is still inaudible. The ducting helped and the video card is sitting at 49C idle and 65C under video load (never any games).

Is 65C still too hot? i don't see any more artifacts but i'm still worried about the card. It uses a rather large passive heatsink on what i thought was a low power card. This is the card

I guess my plans of a slight overclock for better H.264 performance are out. How hot should a passive card like this run?
Last edited by autoboy on Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Gorsnak
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Post by Gorsnak » Sat Sep 09, 2006 3:50 pm

65 is fine. Lots of stock actively cooled cards run ~90C under load. Basically, if you're not getting any artifacts, it's not too hot.

autoboy
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Post by autoboy » Sat Sep 09, 2006 6:55 pm

Well, i got some at 77C. That was idle though. I never checked the load temps before pulling it back out. After reseating the heatsink the artifacts went away. It might have been due to poor contact on some parts of the die. Thanks for the reply. I'll sleep easier now knowing my video card is not going to catch fire and burn my house down.

Gorsnak
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Post by Gorsnak » Sat Sep 09, 2006 9:03 pm

If it was idling at 77, I'd guess it would have been well over 100 under load.

mai9
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Post by mai9 » Sun Sep 10, 2006 4:34 am

how can I know the temp of my video card? I have a ATI x1600 pro.

niels007
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Post by niels007 » Sun Sep 10, 2006 8:40 am

Alright then, that shouldn't be a problem then..

The heatsink might be as, while nice and big, it hasn't got a lot of fins and the surface area is actually less than the 'bodged' AMD cooler I used on my 9700pro and its pretty hard to find 'thin fin' type bigger heatsinks. I might just get a 'big cheap aluminium' cpu heatsink and duct my front 120mm nexus to it.

Since the 9700pro was at 9800pro speeds, comparing the Watts at Xbitlabs says its only about ~7W more for the 6800GT in 3d mode. It gets near 100c which seems hotter than the 9700pro so in the end the 7 extra watts might be tolerable with the same heatsink and same fan speeds, just at the cost of a few degs c

Or just get a VF900 and Nexus mod it..

"I'll be back" :)

jackylman
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Post by jackylman » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:50 pm

mai9 wrote:how can I know the temp of my video card? I have a ATI x1600 pro.
Try ATI Tool to get input from your temp sensor. Click here.

mai9
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Post by mai9 » Mon Sep 11, 2006 7:46 am

jackylman wrote:
mai9 wrote:how can I know the temp of my video card? I have a ATI x1600 pro.
Try ATI Tool to get input from your temp sensor. Click here.
nah... it didn't work :(

Aris
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Post by Aris » Mon Sep 11, 2006 12:19 pm

i know on my new 7600gs, the temp threshold listed in the display settings is defaulted to 125c. I doubt it will ever hit that though, as it idles at around 40c, and load temps are around 60c.

also the silentpipe gigabyte geforce 6 series cards all ran around 100-110c load, without issue. While it probably raised a few eyebrows, it technically worked.

you will always get artifacts in 3d rendering way before your card is hitting a thermal threshold. so as long as you have no artifacts, and its stable, then your good.

david25
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Post by david25 » Sun Sep 17, 2006 12:42 pm

HI, my gigabyte 7600gt idles around 55'c and 75 on load.

SLOTh
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Post by SLOTh » Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:26 pm

Gorsnak wrote:65 is fine. Lots of stock actively cooled cards run ~90C under load. Basically, if you're not getting any artifacts, it's not too hot.
0_o really? my vm-102 on a 7800 gt runs at 70 under load (thats a passive btw) i do have a 120mm in the area spining at aprox. 6 volts.

i know the vm-102 is huge... but still it shouldn;t be that big of a dif.

--sloth

PS i could be an idiot

Gorsnak
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Post by Gorsnak » Sun Sep 17, 2006 1:39 pm

Have you looked at typical stock coolers? Some newer ones aren't too bad, but a great many of those that are designed to keep the card to a single slot are not very good. They have tiny little blower-type fans that move hardly any air through heatsinks that simply don't have a lot of surface area. This isn't really due to bad design, it's because it's next to impossible to pack a lot of cooling into the alloted space. I would expect that pretty much any graphics card with 50w or greater power consumption and a single-slot cooler would have load temps at or near 90C. My X1900GT peaked around 95C before I stuck a vf900 on it - now it peaks at 65C with the fan turned right down and 55C if I turn the fan up.

paulesko
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Post by paulesko » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:27 pm

david25 wrote:HI, my gigabyte 7600gt idles around 55'c and 75 on load.
same that mine overclocked in a nsk 2400 I´m working with these days

DaveSimmons
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Post by DaveSimmons » Sun Sep 17, 2006 2:38 pm

My gigabyte nv 6800 with factory heatpipe idled around 70C and reached mid-80s under load.

...and an nv 6200 paasively cooled in the same PC idled at 50C, but at that point it was just a work PC so I never tried it under load.

autoboy
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Post by autoboy » Sun Sep 17, 2006 8:48 pm

My 7300LE has been idling around 50C now. Since everyone here says that is low, I tried a bit of overclocking. stock the graphics runs 450. OC to 525 with ntune. I could probably go higher. Idle temps went up marginally. Memory stock 675. OC to 850. I thought the memory overclock was pretty good for a LE card. Still seems stable. Might try for a bit more on the core. It could help with the H.264 decoding.

Despite the single slot simple cooling, the directed airflow has really helped the potential of this card.

dragmor
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Post by dragmor » Sun Sep 17, 2006 10:04 pm

The passive 7300GS's at work idle around 70c in the HP towers. The nvidia drivers say that the threshold is 130c. Their only used for 2d however.

niknik
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Post by niknik » Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:22 am

I just recently received my MSI 7600GS (the 512Mb version was the only AGP version without a fan).

Sure, it also gets hotter than I'd like - it was also reaching into the high 60's.
Getting some airflow over it brought it to the 40's.

Works great though... I can now watch HDTV and play games at 1280x720 perfectly. :)


As for H.264, have you tried CoreAVC codec? Works fine on my "lowly" AMD 2600 for 720p.

kater
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Post by kater » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:59 am

my gainward 7600gt runs at 63 idle and 76+ stress with semi-flower zalman clone (all copper) on lowest speed, and not much cooler when cranked up. then, the airflow in the case is not so perfect.

anyone has a thermaltake schooner on 7600tg? any experience with the schooner at all?

kater
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Post by kater » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:00 am

my gainward 7600gt runs at 63 idle and 76+ stress with semi-flower zalman clone (all copper) on lowest speed, and not much cooler when cranked up. then, the airflow in the case is not so perfect.

anyone has a thermaltake schooner on 7600tg? any experience with the schooner at all?

zhai
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Post by zhai » Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:20 pm

I have a thermaltake schooner on my geforce 6600gt. It reaches 72 C on load, and idles at 45. Never had artifacts.

The rest of my system:

A64 3200+
ninja passive
asus a8n-e with zalman nb47j passive chipset cooler
slk3000b, stock 120mm fan @ 5v, papst 4412 (something) @5v in front
seasonic s12-430

kater
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Post by kater » Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:16 am

hey, zhai :)

take a look at my system in general gallery ;)

great minds think alike!

i have now switched to schooner on my 7600gt and temps are as follows: idle 63 / stress 75. ambient is ca 20. vga overclocks very nicely. when at 640/840 temps get a bit higher, sure, but it's still rock stable, no artifacts. the only problem is there is poor exhaust in the case - but i'll take care of it soon.

nightmorph
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Post by nightmorph » Wed Nov 01, 2006 1:31 am

My Gigabyte 7600GT SilentPipeII idles around 48C, and 52C under load. Hottest I've seen it is 55C, though I'm only a very infrequent casual gamer, so I can't say what playing demanding 3D games for hours on end would do to it.

widman
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Post by widman » Thu Nov 02, 2006 9:11 am

my gigabyte silent pipe 7300GT idle at 70C+ and loat at 80C+.

when I increase intake fan speed, it will 60C+ at idle, and 70C at load.

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