Overheating AIW 9800 Pro in SS56G

[boxfetish]

I have now gone through 3 ATI AIW 9800 Pro cards. Two in a Shuttle SS56L and one while using an SS56G (my current machine) and I am getting sick of getting the cards repaired/replaced by ATI.

I have seen/read of others putting even hotter cards in a Shuttle XPC and I do not understand why this particular card keeps overheating on me.

I have underclocked my latest AIW 9800 Pro to 325/300 and it seems to still be overheating after a long session of gaming. (If it makes a difference I play Helf Life 2, Call of Duty 2, and WoW).

Am I doing something wrong? I do not think I can upgrade the cooling on the card and still have it fit in the case as all of the Zalman and other 3rd party coolers are too big.

It is getting to the point where I am considering ditching ATI and getting a Geforce 6600 and a Hauppauge PCI WinTV Card but I am concerned that moving to a two card solution will be even hotter.

I have ordered the 300W SilentX PS to put in my XPC and I am concerned that this will make the inside of the case hotter as well

Any help will be appreciated.



Shuttle SS56G
1GB Ram
ATI All in Wonder Pro 9800
Maxtor 250GB Ultra IDE 16MB Cache
NEC 16x DVD-RW
Mitsumi Floppy/Card Reader.

 

[deathwalker]

Well..I think its time to move on from the 9800....take a look at the ATI X800 XT All In Wonder.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102492

 

[boxfetish]

Erm...thanks...I think. I know all about the AGP X800 AIW, but I am hardly going to drop $300 on another ATI AIW without some assurance that it will not overheat too. Perhaps it is actually time to move on from the Shuttle SFF since they seem to really offer no options for video card cooling. (i.e., AGP slot on the outside of the MB, no airflow through the case, etc.)

 

[Shippy]

I have a biostar IDEQ 200T and the PCI slot is outboard, so I was able to use a 2 slot cooling solution for my 9500Pro when the fan died.

 

[Future Shock]

I have an Antec Aria SFF, with...well, see my sig, it's pretty full. It and it's AIW 9800 have been travelled with extensively, left on continuously for months at a time, and survived quiet well.

I suggest that although the Shuttles are nice looking boxes, the Aria has better airflow and more expansion space (3 drive bays!) It also has a PCI slot cooler bundled, which I don't have to use. I don't overclock, but then I don't underclock either...

Future Shock

 

[frostedflakes]

Think a Thermalright V1 or V1-Ultra would fit? Might be worth looking into.

There's also the Radeon 9600 AIW. These GPUs run give off very little heat (probably ~15w load, compared to ~40w for a 9800) so are pretty easy to cool. Not sure how the features compare to those on the 9800 AIW, though. Performance will also be lower as well, although you could potentially overclock the core and memory high enough so the card is competitive with the 9800, but puts out half the heat as a 9800. The 9600 really does have awesome performance/watt (it's based on a 130nm fab. process, whereas 9800 is 180nm or 150nm, can't remember which), but is still only four pipes, so at stock setting the 8 pipe 9800 will stomp all over it.

Or if you wanted to try something a bit more extreme, you could consider hardware undervolting. Did this on my Sapphire X800GTO and was able to reduce GPU voltage by ~25%, which is a ~50% drop in GPU heat output.