x1950pro Temperatures

[Vortex22]

I have a Sapphire x1950pro, the stock cooler is on it, which is basically the same as the ATI reference board. While idling it runs at around 45C, but while playing some Supreme Commander Beta a few minutes ago, I heard the fan get much, much louder, so I alt tabbed and just about freaked out when I saw it at 74!

I'm using an Antec mid tower with a couple of 120mm fans, one front and one rear blowing air from front to back, but that's it. I haven't seen the CPU (E6600 with stock intel fan) go over 56 with load, so I'm not sure why the vid card is getting ready to melt.

I would have preferred the Asus with the nicer cooler, but that wasn't available yet when I ordered all the parts for this comp a couple weeks ago. What would you guys suggest I do about this? It doesn't get nearly as hot while playing less graphically intensive games like WoW. What would be considered a 'safe' load temp anyway for this card?

 

[450R]

There's nothing wrong with 74C ... in fact, it's pretty good.

 

[a123456]

I don't think 74 is that worrisome. It seems to be stable around there as in no artifacts. I have the ASUS and it's not that much cooler. Typically around the same with 50% fan speed. With the fan slowed down to minimum, I've seen it go as high as ~92C. ATI in general releases cards that get a bit hotter. The X1900XT gets around 80-90 but doesn't shut down until 120, I think. CPUs are different. They're usually much cooler than video cards.

If you are really that concerned, you could open up your case and blow a big fan in, but that's really noisy. I did that for a few minutes and the load temps dropped to around 58, but that's not really the setup that I want.

The people over at FAH were running their cards in the 80s 24/7 and haven't seen major problems yet. You could try getting a slot cooler and/or a direct case fan and/or a new 3rd party cooler (e.g. the Arctic X2 or the Zalman VF900). I'm sure those would help if you're concerned. But I think a 3rd party cooler voids your warranty if you care about those things.

 

[Vortex22]

Oh ok, thanks for the info. I noticed that the fan was throttling up in cycles and then slowing down again, so I guess if it was really getting too hot it would have been running at 100% constantly.

 

[Piuc2020]

Yeah, temperatures of 100 to 120 degrees (celsius) are something you should worry about... but not 74.