Non stock cooler for 8800 GT if not SSC'ing?

[Woozl]

I will be using an eVGA 8800 GT SC as soon as the last couple parts arrive
from http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16814130303

The clock is at 650 as opposed to the default 600. I'm wondering, if I'm NOT attempting to do any overclocking, whether the stock fan will be all right on its own. I've read a lot of opinions saying that it isn't, but its hard to tell just how much people have tweaked their setups before reaching that conclusion.

The rest of my setup consists of one of the more basic lian li cases, 4 80 mm case fans, a zalman cpu cooler
http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16835118115

and I also have one of these that I used for my 4400GT
http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16835888112

With these should I be allright, or would a more serious VGA cooler be par for the course for getting a good lifetime out of my card?

Next question, when using riva tuner, I've heard you can directly manipulate fan speed, but does the program give you a readout of VGA chip temp or would I need to buy and install a separate sensor to measure that? If anything I'd consider using riva tuner to underclock back to 600 or so if it meant getting extra life out of my card.

I'm probably just being uber paranoid, but I'd hate to have the thing go up in smoke . Thanks in advance.

 

[ashishmishra]

Originally posted by: Woozl
I will be using an eVGA 8800 GT SC as soon as the last couple parts arrive
from http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16814130303

The clock is at 650 as opposed to the default 600. I'm wondering, if I'm NOT attempting to do any overclocking, whether the stock fan will be all right on its own. I've read a lot of opinions saying that it isn't, but its hard to tell just how much people have tweaked their setups before reaching that conclusion.

The rest of my setup consists of one of the more basic lian li cases, 4 80 mm case fans, a zalman cpu cooler
http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16835118115

and I also have one of these that I used for my 4400GT
http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16835888112

With these should I be allright, or would a more serious VGA cooler be par for the course for getting a good lifetime out of my card?

Next question, when using riva tuner, I've heard you can directly manipulate fan speed, but does the program give you a readout of VGA chip temp or would I need to buy and install a separate sensor to measure that? If anything I'd consider using riva tuner to underclock back to 600 or so if it meant getting extra life out of my card.

I'm probably just being uber paranoid, but I'd hate to have the thing go up in smoke . Thanks in advance.

If you're not planning to overclock from the factory specs then you do not need an after-market cooler. Use Rivatuner to adjust your fan speed, 40% is silent and cools reasonably well. If you are don't mind tinkering a little bit, take the stock cooler off, clean the thick thermal goo they have used and then apply a thin film of a non conducting thermal compound like "arctic silver ceramique" directly on the GPU surface, this will drop your temps further. Rivatuner has a hardware monitoring option which will give you all the current operating parameters of your GPU like Core clock, shader clock, memory clock, core temperature etc. You don't really need anything else apart from from Rivatuner.