video coolers

[Fezzik]

Anyone have a recommendation for a VGA cooler for an ATI 3870?

I'm looking at Arctic Cooling Accelero twin turbo, or s1 rev 2; Scythe Musashi, or Zalman vf 1000

Any other suggestions? At normal operating conditions (725mhz or something around there) the temp playing NWN2 is going up to 90C!!! I've dumbed it down to 300MHz and it's running at 68C

What's been happening is I get a black screen, the monitor goes into digital power saving mode (no signal) but the sound keeps going... when I slowed it down, I haven't gotten any black screens of voidiness.

[Saulus]

Ouch, 90c is fairly hot for that card. Have you thought of re-arranging your case fan configuration for starters to optimize airflow? Properly tied cables and proper exhaust make a big difference on top of the cooler.

I would go with the Accelero personally, I think its the better product.

[Fezzik]

Thanks!

I have a feeling once I pull it out I"m going to find a lot of fine dust... I've blasted it with air while routine cleaning (that helped a lot! but it started slowly again). I've got a Antec 900... so the PSU is right below the video car, blowing air on it. The stock fan is in a little plastic case; I think a more open fan/heatsink system will help a lot.

I've got 5 fans in total and I upped the speed on two of them last night too, just for faster flow, but neither on of those is right be the card... I might see if the one that has a speed switch on it can be put on the side and change that with the one thats on the side.

Ordered an Accelero, hard to say when it will be here, I'll just live with choppy video for a while.

[Saulus]

Well generally you want to clean out the dust at least once a month, my temps can raise by as much as 10C if I don't.

[Maevan2]

Well generally you want to clean out the dust at least once a month, my temps can raise by as much as 10C if I don't.

*wonders where Saulus lives and when he'll die because of his silicosis*

[Thief Of Navarre]

Think Saulus is on the money with that!

I had my card cramping on Oblivion (PC totally shutdown) till I changed my case fan direction and cleaned out my GPU fan (X1900XTX IceQ, the one with the big turbine exhaust -.- dust heaven).

The mainboard and cpu ran about 15c cooler and the GPU temp dropped by 36c. I was impressed to say the least that a little bit of optimisation can make a world of difference!

[Fezzik]

Well, it's been running for just under a week with it on.... Temp is about 54 degrees C running at 775 and the memory speed is normal as well. Far cry from the 68 C running at 300 it was before

[Fezzik]

Well, it bit the dust so I went out and got a 4830... problem with that is I think I discovered in the interim that I bought a crappy PSU. So after unplugging one of my dvd drives, I have a reasonably stable system (Ultra x2 PSU is rated at 750, but apparently it's only been tested to give under 500 consistently with no failure, and I did a little quick calc on the web to see hos much I'm using, and it seems it's just under 475 with everything plugged in. Guess I"ll have to save a bit of money and get a better PSU.

I'm assuming I get what I pay for, so I should avoid the OCZ's? Antec, Corsair and Enermax are the ones I'm looking at -- modular preferred. Any opinions?

[Maevan2]

I am using a beQuiet now. But as that is not on your list i would say Enermax.

I just wonder what crappy PSU and what hardware you have now as my 450W PSU is more than enough for my Core2 Quad 9450, 4GB, 2 7200HDs and a SDD, 2 DVD drives and a 9600GT

But i probably won't buy a modular PSU again unless i really need just one or two cables. Or at least none where each cable has a coating around it. It looks nice but when you try to use them they are just thicker and less flexible and therefore more difficult to use, especially if you don't have much room in your case.

[Lothoir]

Go with Thermaltake. I replaced an old PSU with this and haven't had a problem since. I spent more on it because when I build a new computer in the future, the PSU will probably be one of the few components that isn't obsolete.

[Fezzik]

Maev, it's an Ultra X2 PSU; Core2 Quad 6600, 6gb ram, 3 HDD's in a RAID (had another one in there too for a while when I thought it was failing, now I think it was just the PSU slowly crapping out and the video card getting overheated too) was 2 DVD/DVD RW (now 1), the 4830 Radeon, about 4 USB devices, 3 normal size led fans, 1 slightly bigger and a 250mm? fan on the top of the case. All totalled it's about 435W or so.... Tests done after I bought my PSU said that it failed sometime before 500W loads. TigerDirect doesn't sell that particular PSU anymore, I'm going with Canada Computer from now on.