HannibalX
Diamond Member
I suppose this could go in Cases and Cooling but its also video related.
A about a year and a half back I purchased an ATi Radeon X1600 Pro in AGP flavor with 512 MB of memory. The manufacturer, Sapphire, put the crummiest cooling solution on the card I had ever seen. I put the card in my wife's PC and fired it up without changing anything (+1 for unified drivers!). ATi Tool recognized the card immediately and began to report temp data, and it wasn't pretty. Idling at the windows desktop the core was peaking at 70C! Playing a 3D game brought the temps up to 90C! I could hear all my case fans working overtime. After about an hour I reached my limit and browsed on over to Newegg; I ordered the Zalman VF900 and received it just a day later (Go Newegg!).
After installing the VF900 the idle temps came down to 30C and the load temps peaked at 40C! Like I mentioned before this is my wife's PC and she doesn't do much gaming. The PC basically has sat in the same configuration for 1.5 years without me even checking on it.
I moved across the country last weekend and left my main PC back at my office in Maitland, FL. All I have had this week is the wife's PC. I fired up CS source and it runs perfect but I noticed in ATi tool the temps were higher than I remembered. About 55C idle and 70C under load. I shrugged it off as my AC doesn't run continuously in this new house (not needed). My old house was 70F 24/7 but this new house is about 75-80F most of the time. Well after about a week it started to bug me, I opened up the case and found the fan on the VF900 STOPPED... that right, not moving! Now mind you, I have over clocked the %&$# out of this X1600 card - much more than I probably should and even fully over clocked the cooler was able to keep the card at usable temps without a fan!
Long story short (a tad late for that?) I got the fan going and temps are back down to 30C and 40C respectably. I have been wondering how long the fan has been off - maybe the entire 1.5 years? Either way, go Zalman for making a great product! If I had the stock cooler on this chances are this card would have fried long ago.
Thanks for reading!
Wife's PC Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) @ 2.2 GHz
ATi Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 512 MB
2x512 Patriot DDR400 Cas2 Memory
Antec TP 2.0 400 watt PSU.
Mach Speed something or other motherboard.
Other misc parts.
A about a year and a half back I purchased an ATi Radeon X1600 Pro in AGP flavor with 512 MB of memory. The manufacturer, Sapphire, put the crummiest cooling solution on the card I had ever seen. I put the card in my wife's PC and fired it up without changing anything (+1 for unified drivers!). ATi Tool recognized the card immediately and began to report temp data, and it wasn't pretty. Idling at the windows desktop the core was peaking at 70C! Playing a 3D game brought the temps up to 90C! I could hear all my case fans working overtime. After about an hour I reached my limit and browsed on over to Newegg; I ordered the Zalman VF900 and received it just a day later (Go Newegg!).
After installing the VF900 the idle temps came down to 30C and the load temps peaked at 40C! Like I mentioned before this is my wife's PC and she doesn't do much gaming. The PC basically has sat in the same configuration for 1.5 years without me even checking on it.
I moved across the country last weekend and left my main PC back at my office in Maitland, FL. All I have had this week is the wife's PC. I fired up CS source and it runs perfect but I noticed in ATi tool the temps were higher than I remembered. About 55C idle and 70C under load. I shrugged it off as my AC doesn't run continuously in this new house (not needed). My old house was 70F 24/7 but this new house is about 75-80F most of the time. Well after about a week it started to bug me, I opened up the case and found the fan on the VF900 STOPPED... that right, not moving! Now mind you, I have over clocked the %&$# out of this X1600 card - much more than I probably should and even fully over clocked the cooler was able to keep the card at usable temps without a fan!
Long story short (a tad late for that?) I got the fan going and temps are back down to 30C and 40C respectably. I have been wondering how long the fan has been off - maybe the entire 1.5 years? Either way, go Zalman for making a great product! If I had the stock cooler on this chances are this card would have fried long ago.
Thanks for reading!
Wife's PC Specs:
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (Barton) @ 2.2 GHz
ATi Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 512 MB
2x512 Patriot DDR400 Cas2 Memory
Antec TP 2.0 400 watt PSU.
Mach Speed something or other motherboard.
Other misc parts.
