f13.net

Bought this card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130273) a few weeks ago. Everything seems to run fine, for the most part. However, I have had the PC spontaneously shut down (monitor goes blank- 'no signal' indicator on monitor- need to push reset key to reboot) several times. Until yesterday, it only happened while playing EVE, and only during combat (happened yesterday with EVE too- right in the middle of a PVP encounter. Lucky me); then I had it happen while playing BF2.

My first guess is that overheating is causing this- when the card is doing a lot of work, it gets hot and shuts everything down. Does that sound accurate? If that is the case, what is the easiest solution? Will un-overclocking the card help? Do I need to buy another fan? Do they have strictly internal fans, or do I need to get a new case with extra fans on it?

If this was a PS issue I figure I would see less predictable behavior, no?

TIA for any assistance.

It could be an issue of the PS not having enough wattage to run the machine under peak load - when the card starts drawing too much current, the machine loses power and shuts down.  How does your power supply compare to the card you're using?

Heat could also be an issue, though.  If you haven't already, get a can of compressed air and blow the dust out; that solves a lot of problems all on its own.  How many fans does your case currently have?  For best results you generally want one on the front and one on the back (sucking air in the front and blowing it out the back; don't have 'em both pointing in or out).  If you've only got one fan right now, check inside the case (or the manual that came with it) to see if there's a convenient spot to mount an extra fan, and what size fan goes there.  If there's no such spot, you might just wanna get a new case that has such a spot.

I think Sam is dead on with the Power Supply diagnosis, you can go to some super-techy/geeky forums and find breakdowns of what you need in terms of "rails" (I find it confusing so I will not try to explain) to keep a good video card running.

Fark, I asked about this in the Video Card Thread and "people" said "blah blah blah, you don't need to worry about this".

I bought the unclocked version of the card so I'm interested in hearing how this works out.  According to the evga forums and newegg customer feedback underclocking may get some relief.  It might also be a psu problem - evidently you need 18A or more on the 12V rail - or a driver issue, but that's just guessing from what people say works and without them mentioning anything about their setup. 

My technique is simpler:

1) Look at the box your video card came in.  It says "Requires at least X-watt power supply".
2) Look at the box your case/power supply/PC came in.  It says "Y-watt power supply".

If X > Y, oops.

(There are undoubtedly more complex things that can go wrong, but checking whether X > Y is the most important step IMO.)

I figured a PS problem would manifest itself more often, but you very well may be right. The card requires 350W minimum...I don't recall specifically picking out a PS when I put the PC together (rather, paid to have someone put it together), so I am wondering if they shorted me with like a 250W? I will check when I get home. I wonder if I can tell without opening the case?

Many of them will have some specs listed on the back of the box where you plug the cord into the power supply. If not, you'll have to crack the case to get a gander inside.

It definitely sounds more like a power supply issue than a overheating one. If you can read the back of the power supply you can usually get the overall power supply rating from there. If your power supply has a printed breakdown of the power supplied to each rail that will usually be on the "top" of the power supply which would usually mean removing it from the case to read it unless your case cover is one big piece that covers the top and the sides (separately removable side panels is the more popular design these days). You can also try unplugging all the unnecessary 12V molex connectors (the same connector type you plugged into you video card) from other devices like your DVD/CD drive(s), and secondary hard drives. This might help confirm whether or not it's a lack of power that's causing the system to turn off.

You can check your NVIDIA control panel to see if it has a temperature monitor display. If not you can try installing the "coolbits" registry hack and checking again. eVGA is a good manufacturer so they should have temperature sensor chip installed on the board.

Here is my quote from the other thread:


I am still having zero issues with the card.  It can't be my state of the art power supply.  Maybe I'm not powering my microwave and blender with the power supply so that there is more juice from the card? 

I have a CDROM drive, DVDROM drive, hard drive, video card, sound card, etc. using the same power supply. 

Overheating will not cause crashes most of the time, it will just melt the freaking card at some point.  I had a card where the cheapo on-board fan had died for I have no idea how long, I burned myself on the card not knowing this it was running so hot.

I put a new fan on there but I guess the damage had been done and the card died a few months after my discovery.

Power supply stuff OTOH sucks, but isn't too hard to fix.  I forget what the PSU I bought was but I really like it I'll post back later in case you need a starting point recommendation.

Just to chime in:

1. Power Supply
2. Heat issues
3. Memory issues

In order from most likely to least, with memory being a long shot.

As mentioned before it's probably caused by your machine not getting enough juice while under load from gaming.  The general concensus on a minimum power req for most "casual gaming" rigs is 480 watts.  And caveat that's 480 watts from a reliable PSU maker.  I have what I guess is considered an "enthusiast" grade computer and I run a 700 watt PSU, and I don't even have an SLI rig (anymore).

If your comp was running fine, what did you change between when it was running ok and when it started giving you problems?  By process of elimination you already have named your new video card as something you changed.  Since I doubt you have a bad card (it wouldn't reboot you if it was a bad card anyway) I'd follow the advice above about checking all the power connections on your mobo and vid card (if applicable), take the side off your case to remove the question of heat, and see what happens.

*shrug* My hunch is it's your PSU, or a related power drawing issue.


Some clickies for good PSU's and an interesting link about powering your rig:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29079

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151024

http://www.home2000.net/client/fspgroupusacom/proddetail.asp?linenumber=195


 Good luck!

 

Un-overclocking may help but that's cause your card is seriously overclocked (460 MHz vs 375 MHz) and is probably drawing more power because it.

Overheated video cards tend to not 'reboot' your system; they just fry, give graphical glitches, and die, with your computer otherwise humming along happily as if nothing had happened.

I'd not only check PSU, but Heat issues with your CPU. I know Everest used to come with a heat sensor for both GPU and CPU, but I'm sure there's some other aftermarket software to see if your CPU is running too hot. If your CPU is Intel, it will 'reboot' on an overheat, instantly 'fixing' the problem. Intels also run hotter than AMD for the most part.

The reason you may not have seen this behavior before is that your vid card is putting out additional heat, as well as creating more of an airflow situation than you may have had before. If you do not have adequate airflow, say above 35 cfps (cubit feet per second) you may have a steamy hot jungle and the first thing to scream for mercy is an Intel CPU.

Make sure you've vaccumed the inside of your comp lately, and that all your fans are operational. I do mean all of them. There really is no skimping on this.

Finally, installing a new PSU is not a big deal at all; one of the simpler things to do. If you can afford it, spend a few extra bucks on a good brand. http://www.pcpowercooling.com/home/ have a good reputation.

It is technically possible for a hot video card to shut down the system.  If nothing else, most systems have a temperature probe on the CPU that automatically shuts the system down if it gets too hot.  So if the video card was generating too much hot air that wasn't getting circulated out of the case fast enough, it could contribute to the CPU overheating and cause the system to shut down.

Still think the power supply is the most likely culprit though.

Pentium 4 class CPUs will *not* reboot when they overheat -- they will automatically throttle down their speed.

Pretty much what I was saying. And I didn't know that about Pentium 4 class CPUs, I stand corrected! Since I've been an AMD owner since back before Socket A, I may have just been misinformed about Intels. In any case, I heard they had some kind of safety measure AMDs didn't.

If throttling down the speed doesn't do the trick, though, won't they eventually give up and shut down?  My siblings had similar problems that eventually turned out to be heat-related (and were fixed with a can of compressed air).

Though it is more likely to be a straight up power supply issue you can check how hot things are getting if you have the right monitoring tools.

The NVIDIA display driver comes with a simple temperature display assuming your card has a temperature monitoring sensor like I mentioned above:

(http://www.pandadesigns.com/misc/nvidia_display_temp.jpg)

Notice how there's a temperature warning check box which should give you a warning if something bad is happening and there's a threshold value which is supposed to slow down your GPU if things are getting way too hot.

If you have a decent motherboard with temperature sensor chips on it you should be able to monitor the key temps with software like this (for those that are curious my MB has a heat pipe passively cooled chipset which is why there's no fan attached):

(http://www.pandadesigns.com/misc/pcprobe01.jpg)
(http://www.pandadesigns.com/misc/pcprobe02.jpg)

Yes it will eventually give up and shutdown but that usually indicates something catastrophic has happened like your CPU fan has stopped spinning or your heat sink somehow fell off. If you are playing a game, though, you should see your frame rate drop dramatically as the CPU throttles down before it eventually gives up.

Yeah the Socket A CPUs don't have any built-in temperature sensor -- it is up to the motherboard to provide thermal protection which many do not. That meant you could very easily fry your Athlon/Athlon XP if you didn't install your heat sink properly and you didn't have a quick finger on the power supply off switch. Even on the MBs that do have a thermal protection, the temperature sensor is usually this little probe sticking up from the center of the CPU socket and you had to make sure it was bent upwards enough to touch the CPU packaging. Ah those were the days...

Thanks for all the replies so far- lots of good info here. I just got off the phone with the place I bought the case (and the rest of the parts from)- it sounds like I probably have a 380W PSU in there right now. Upgrading to an Antec 500W (the same brand I have now) will run about $110. Does that sound about right?

As far as the cleaning goes, the case got a pretty throrough cleaning when I put the card in a few weeks ago, so factor should be less likely.

Other info- I have an AMD 3200+ (IIRC); definitely not an Intel chip. The only change to the set up was an extra gig of RAM a few months ago, and the new card a few weeks ago. I have never seen the issue happen before the new card was in.

Depends on which model of Antec PS is it. The "SmartPower" version is $80 at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103937

The more robust 550W "TruePower" version runs $86 at newegg with rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931


The extra RAM will draw more current and depending on how the power supply is setup that may reduce the available current on the 12V line.

380 really should be plenty of wattage unless you're running a buncha hard drives in raid or some such. Still, the thing with PSUs is that the cheap ones have voltage fluctuations that can degrade over time and eventually you end up with the PSU sending a bit more or less voltage than you want, and that causes all sorts of havoc that's hard to identify.

Also, have you checked your 'event viewer' under administrative tools or Manage (right click on my computer)? It may have recorded the fault although that's sometimes impossible to decifer.

Watch yuorself with that Asus Prode program....it can get buggy sometimes. Also, it can force reboots before anything even reaches a maximum threashold (ie - temp).

I don't normally have it running -- I launched it to take those screenshots but thanks for the warning. I stopped running it after I was satisfied that my new computer was running cool enough for my tastes. It also has a few annoyances like not being able to set the fan speed threshold low enough. Notice how my chassis fan is not checked. That's cause it's a 120 mm fan that's been undervolted to spin slower (and quieter) and the software won't let me set a warning level under 600 RPM.

If it IS a Power Supply issue, and I'm inclined to believe it is based on my past fuckups with PSU's, changing PSU's is really easy. It's much easier than I thought it would be. For someone who has tried and failed to install a CPU, I'd much rather change a power supply than add a new IDE drive (because IDE cables fucking suck).

Update- I bought one of these (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=22550) and got it in last night. So far so good- it runs a bit quieter now, and the case seemed a bit cooler (although I didn't get to play very long, so that could change). The real test will be when I get into a combat in Eve. Hard to do at the moment since my combat ship got assploded. Played some BF2 without issue, but I have only seen a problem with that once.

You know I picked up that same power supply a couple of months ago and my first thought after I installed it was how quiet it was.  I've been happy with it since.

One thing you can do if you suspect cooling issues is just run it with the cover or side off and direct a fan in there if need be.

To monitor temps and fans I've been using SpeedFan, it's handy and free.

Well the 7800GS is installed and running.  Had a weird lockup where all I could do was bring up task manager, which showed the system idle, and eventually had to hard reboot.  Also lost my router connection and had to reset it to get the connection back.  No idea if that's related but too much of a conincidence.  Will see how stable things remain but might just go ahead with the psu upgrade anyway.

Latest update:
After  a few days of no problems, my PC quit again last night after several hours of gaming (Eve and BF2). This time I got a message that the CPU was overheating, and it wouldn't boot. I went to bed. This morning, I booted it up- during the boot, I got a message saying the overclocking was dsabled, and that I could either go into setup and tinker with it or boot with default levels. I booted with the default, and was able to log into Eve and change some skills.

Questions-
Will the lack of overclocking make the card run cooler? I never had heat problems before I installed the new card.
Are there any internal fans that can be mounted on the inside of a case, or do I need to buy a new case altogether?
Why, after going to the trouble of buying a new card that is doing its level best to destroy my PC and wallet, am I not playing Oblivion more often?

1. Yes. Overclocking is running the card at a higher frequency. This requires more power. The amount overclocked however isn't great and you won't be able to get more than a few degrees of coolness. What it DOES do however is reduce the tolerances so that your card can run normally at a higher temperature.

2. Most cases have conspicuous "fan holes" in the front and the back where you can easily mount off the shelf fans. If you open the case up it's pretty obvious where they go. Fans generally come in 2 standard sizes and look like mini box fans. They come with their own 4 mounting screws and can really take the heat pressure off, assuming you have decent airflow out the back. Don't put them in backwards and remember air generally flows front->back.

3. Because oblivion sucks and is lonely.

If you have a PCI slot available, they do make PCI-slot case fans.

I have great success with leaving my case open.  It is noisy but I prefer that to overheating or paying for extra fans.

Hmmm. I do have a spring loaded door on my case...I might try leaving it crack open and see if that has any effect. It sounds like my card decided to un-overclock itself, so the combination of the two might keep me from making ANOTHER run to the computer store. Until it doesn't work and fries my goddamned CPU.

I have an eVGA 9800gt and have ran into some overheating problems.  It turns out that fan housing works quite well as a dust collector, which blocks the flow of air to the heat sink.  Considering your card is brand new I would assume this is not your problem, but for future reference you are going to want to remove that plate and either vacuum or blow the dust and hair out of the housing.  It's also something to consider if you are goint to leave your case open.  I ended up closing mine after years of not having a cover on in hopes of keeping dust/hair out of my fan housing.  It's really quite a stupid design.

Cooling geeks (yes, there is such an animal) will argue very vehemently against leaving the case open. You want at least two fans on your box, one in front, one in back, pushing air in, and pulling air out; which one does which is subject to debate. Leaving the case open without an actual flow of air moving through the box is simply letting hot air 'sit' on top of your hot components and the idea is that you want fresh, cool air to move into that space. Hoping simple open air convection will do the cooling is not a good idea.

That makes sense for the setups that cooling geeks use but that doesn't mean it's worse to the leave the case open in all situations. I helped plenty of people on the CoH forums who were having trouble with their GF4 cards overheating by telling them to open up their cases (the reference cooler design on the GF4 was pretty poor).

It's not just as simple as having the front and back fans. Most cheapo cases have very poor airflow through the front of the case. Cooling geeks have no problem with this since they just whip out their Dremel and make themselves a giganto opening. The rear exhaust is often not a whole lot better with an airflow restricting grill working against the fan (out comes the Dremel again). Heck a lot of cases don't even have a fan mount in the front. By leaving the case open, as long as your ambient room temperature is lower than the hottest parts of the case, free convection will move hot air away from your hottest components. This is less efficient than if you had a well cooled case but most people probably don't understand how to identify or build a case that is. If your ambient temperature is the same as the inside of your computer, well then you have other problems and closing the case is not going to make things any better (since you are just sucking in hot air) and you are better off opening up the case and sticking a room fan next to your case to cool it off that way.

Check to make sure your CPU heat sink is still mounted properly and the fan on top is still spinning. That's not good that your CPU is overheating. If you are going to run with your case open I would suggest you stick a room fan next to it and blow room temperature air into it.

But they're wrong!

Obligatory Links:

(http://img310.imageshack.us/img310/2198/computerfan9qz.jpg)

(http://img476.imageshack.us/img476/2363/computermelt0ps.jpg)

The case is facing the wrong way.

Miasma, overclocking means increasing the cycling on your cpu or gpu slightly. Not throwing gasoline soaked swiss watches at the keyboard and front panel of your computer. Just makin sure we're on the same page  :-D

Further update- After booting it successfully yesterday morning, I arrived home last night to test it and see how hot it was going to run with the non-o/c'ed GPU. I started the system up and walked out of the room. Came back a couple of minutes later and clicked my log in name to start Windows. Which asked to be activated before I could use it. WTF? I tried to activate, but it couldn't detect an Internet connection. I rebooted and realized that it was booting from my old (slave) HDD which has XP Home on it, and not the IDE master drive with XP Pro.

I went into the BIOS to see WTF was going on. The BIOS was not detecting the IDE Master drive at all, and I couldn't figure out a way to get it to detect. I then went in to monitor the CPU temperature through the BIOS- it climbed steadily from 82 degrees (F) to about 105 in less than 3 minutes. Is that normal? What is the normal running temp?

I am at a loss. I unplugged everything last night and plan to take it in to the shop today. This fucking $300 video card is going to end up costing me a grand or more eventually. Fuck.

Depends on the CPU but 105 F is nothing to worry about assuming it wasn't continuing to climb before you turned it off -- if you look at my screenshots on the previous page you can see my Athlon 64 X2 is idling at 100 F and I have a massive Zalman cooler on top of mine.

Is the hard drive still powering up? If so try another IDE port on your motherboard and try another IDE cable if you have one. Also check the jumper on that drive to see if it's explicitly set to master or if it's using cable auto detect and change it to master if it's on auto detect. And disconnect the IDE and power connector from the slave drive to remove that from the equation.

100F is nothing to worry about.  That's just barely warm to the touch.

Most semiconductors are characterized to run in the 50C to 70C range (that's 122F to 158F, respectively) without problems.  Typically the maximum
junction temperature rated on a datasheet (with full operation) is 85C (or 185F).

Keep in mind the effectiveness of any heatsink is directly proportional the the temperature differential between the object being cooled and the ambient temperature of the air.  You can put the best Zalman heatsink+fan combos on your chipset, CPU, and video card, and it can still overheat your computer if there isn't enough airflow to keep the case air temperature at a minumum.  With a 100W CPU, a 150W video card, and a 50W chipset all pumping heat into a case it can go from room temp to muffin baking temperature in a very short time.

As stated above, the best option is to use a single fan on one side drawing air into the inside of the case, and another fan blowing out on the other side.  The vast majority of cases support this operation, and all you have to do is find the fan mounting holes on the inside of the case.  They are typicall 90mm or 120mm apart in a square pattern.  Two Panaflo fans running in this configuration can keep the case temperature reasonable and they don't add much noise either.

I just got myself two replacement 120 mm fans for my Antec "Lan Boy" case (my god that's an embarassing name, but its a really nifty case). The two 120 fans that came with it were low speed, low noise. Since I've caught my GPU heading up into the 120s range, which is technically fine, but makes me antsy, I bought two aftermarket 120 fans for front and back. The new fans run faster, both alleging an 80-90 cubic foot per minute air flow rate. Its going to be noisy as heck, but I'm not taking any risks with my 2nd GPU.

Oh, and WAP, hate to say it, but your problems may have been a dying hard drive in the first place. Have my fingers crossed for ya.

Further update- drug the PC in the the shop and gave him the rundown on what has happened to date. He popped the cover off and hooked it up to a monitor. Of course, XP Pro (on my new drive) booted right up. His explanation was a bit confusing (he has a REALLY thick accent), but it sounded like the shutdown caused the BIOS to default to look for an IDE drive instead of a SATA drive? Something along those lines.

Further inspection of the case showed that the case fan at the back was running at about 15 RPMs, which is almost assuredly the cause of the heat problems- the CPU and GPU fans were running fine, as was the fan on the PS. He grabbed a $13 case fan off the shelf and was going to install it- just got a call from him to let me know it is ready.

Goddamn I hope this is the end of this crap. Stupid Oblivion.

I am fucked currently.  I had an issue with my video card due to the fan port getting blocked (or so I thought, might of been the PSU outlet that was blocked I am thinking now), and started having crazy graphics issues.  So I went to the net and found a decent card that was a slight upgrade (see other thread) and immediately ordered it without thinking.  Well, turns out it was PCIE, which I did not have on my MOBO, so I decided to order a new MOBO, looked around, found a decent mobo, bought one_{fuck ebay}, and went looking for a CPU.  Turns out CPU's are expensive (relatively) for the MOBO I purchased, and dropped more money then I could afford on one + CPU fan (read: College tuition). 

MOBO I got for a steal seems to be busted, and for the benefit of brevity will not go into the details of my trouble-shooting over the last week + 1/2.  After spending the last 10 years or so with minimal breaks from easy access to the internet I am not sure what to do, and since I decided to take a break from my occupation to work at a restaurant (I  :heart: the job) I am fucking poor.  Tomorrow I am going to make a list of parts and will figure out what to do from there. 

Eh, I guess if worse comes to worse I can go back into the military, heh.  Does anyone have a suggestion for a cost effective PSU (450W+, 24 pin for MOBO), MOBO (preferably with PCIE, DDR1 and 2, P4 Prescott 775 socket CPU capability), and possibly a case?

On a side note, my brother during his visit from Iraq, gave me a PS2 along with some random games to play.  I now realize that MMOGs have spoiled me on all console games.

edit.  Clarity.

Do you mean to say "Prescott" instead of "Prentiss"? If so, we still need to know which socket type you prefer (Prescott comes in socket 478 and socket 775 versions).

Gah, I just installed two fans here man, hope he doesn't charge you a bundle for that installation, since its just about as easy as installing a video card. Easier in fact since it doesn't require drivers or anything. And yes, if your computer was set to boot to SATA but the bios default was to boot from IDE (two different types of hard drive) and somehow you reset your bios, naturally, your OS would not boot.

I just got done installing two 120 mm fans. The good news is that the thing is super cool. Right now the CPU registers at 26 Celcius / 79 F. Its actually cooler than my ambient temperature (the GPU and other devices heat up the system more than the cpu!) The bad news is that those two fans are g'damned loud. I knew they would be loud, but not this danged loud. The previous fans were going at 300 rpm, these go at 1800 rpm.

Get a fan speed controller and undervolt the fans.

Just go onto Newegg and look around. There are tons of different types of fans and cooling solutions.

Heh, where do you think I got these two? Unfortunately, some things you have to see in person to get it right. As for a fan voltage regulator, I may have to revert to that. One of them came with one, and I currently have that one tuned down. Its the other one that runs at 1800 that's pretty loud still. Its liveable.

I had him install the fan since the case was already open and sitting there- even I could have installed a new one. $25 in labor to troubleshoot and install the fan.

Except the fucking PC died AGAIN last night. Same behavior as before- playing BF2 for a couple of hours, then the monitor goes black (no signal) and I have to use the reset button to start the PC again. No warnings about CPU temp or anything. I know the new fan was working- it was blowing cool air off the wall behind my desk which was then bouncing onto my leg- first time I remember that happeneing, so my case fan was probably nearly dead for a long time.

It takes a few hours of gaming to get the problem to manifest itself, which seems like it will nearly impossible for the shop to troubleshoot. Any suggestions?

Not necesarially true - Does it always take around the same amount of time? If you reset and continue playing, does the time decrease or is it stable for that amount of time afterwards? Does it happen when you're loading a level, or just randomly?

These questions can help narrow down what might be going on; a lot of things can cause a hard freeze, evrything from a bad piece of memory (might want to get a decent memory tester / system burnin on a cd and boot into it and let it run) to the power supply not giving enough of a steady current to your hard drive throwing out a bad signal and causing your bus to freak out.

A good indication that it isn't the heat is your ability to just reboot and continue playing.

Some digging around found quite a few threads about the card you bought having blank screen problems, often with BF2.  It looks like there was a bad batch shipped out.  There seem to be several options to fix it.  I would first download coolbits (http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815), turn off overclocking and see what happens.  If that doesn't work try installing the ngo drivers (http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=10) and if that fails I would probably try to get a replacement.  Or if you don't want to have to bring down the clock setting maybe go right to getting the card replaced.

Also note that if you wait a while the display should return, the card is shutting itself off because it thinks it is too hot but once the temperature returns to normal it will bring back the monitor display.

Go down to a post by JLukas. (http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forums/viewthread/90891/)
Another 7800gs black screen with BF2 thread. (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=64632)
Unfortunately the links referenced from this thread are now dead. (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=177992)
Report (http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11725) of same problem and after getting an RMA everything is fine. (http://evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11962)

Ugh, I hate that type of problem. All the above suggestions are good, but with this type of problem it could be so many things you're basically playing a hit and miss game. I had exactly, I mean exactly the same problem with another box I had, and it turned out that it was a bad motherboard. But it could as easily have been a bad power supply. Or a bad video card. Or a faulty hard drive.

Just last night I was having random reboots as well, after installing my two new fans. Turns out that the voltage regulator that came with one of the fans was making metal-on-metal contact with the case and causing a short any time I wiggled the danged dial. Total luck that I managed to correlate the dial wiggle with the reboot.

Interesting- thanks for the links! I will try coolbits tonight, and maybe try the new drivers as well. Having to RMA it will fucking piss me off to no end, since I gave my other card to my brother already.

I had that problem a few PCs ago- it was driving me crazy! I would get crazy display glitches and the like. I became expert and reseating the card, which tended to clear it up for a bit, but eventually it wouldn't work any more. Found out there was a short and got it taken care of; things worked fine after that.

I am starting to understand schild's fondness for consoles.

Latest-
Installed coolbits- at least the registry hack part. I couldn't figure out where/what the UI was to change the clock settings- I am obviously missing something. I checked the nVidia control panel and asked it to tell me when it reached critical heat (115 degrees C was the default, so I left it there). It was idling between 58 and 59 while I was checking it. Also installed the NGO drivers (which warned me 3 differerent times that they were not responsible for any damage incurred from using the drivers- I am brimming with confidence now!).

Played Eve for an hour or so. Checked the temp- 59. Played Bf2 for 2-3 hours. Checked the temp- 58. No black screens, no noticeable problems. Cautious optimism.

I might be a cooling enthusiast, but not quite.  Just for clarification, I run with the sidepanel off because I get a few degrees cooler that way, at least last time I checked temperatures.  I have a huge tower with crappy airflow, and this is just easier.  The noise has bothered me for a while but I'm too fucking lazy to do anything about it.  The obvious solution is water cooling, but that's work++.  If I was going to do that, I'd just mod the case for better airflow... and cut a hole for that second PSU.

As it is now, my lower cupholder is flaking and I have a shiny new DVD/CD combo burner just sitting on the table, but I just can't muster the energy to even replace that thing.  I am having a blast playing Atelier Iris 2 (PS2) and Castlevania (Xbox), though.

Back to WAP... I haven't seen any mention of thermal paste.  I assume you or the installer used some.  It's rather important.  With temp = 58 I think you must have. ;-)

There is simply no excuse for a noisy case anymore. For an exrta 10-15 bucks for the case itself and for an extra maybe $20 or $30 in special fans, you can get a more or less silent case. Silent enough to hear when the hard drive reads, anyway. You don't need to go to water cooling or any other crazy techie thing, just buy the right components (ones that specifically have "quiet" as a benefit) and build it yourself.

You should see something similar to this. (http://www.nvnews.net/reviews/msi_geforce_6600gt_sli/images/coolbits.jpg)  The clock frequencies section appears after the registry change.  Then bring the clock down to whatever the stock speed is, probably 375.  The "No overclocking" option is somewhat misleading, it actually just reverts back to the card's default settings, however since the default setting is overclocked choosing the "No overclocking" actually turns on overclocking, at least on my card.

That said if the drivers seem to be working I wouldn't mess with any of it.

What did you set the CoolBits registry value to? It should be 3 since you aren't using SLI:

(http://www.pandadesigns.com/misc/coolbits_registry.jpg)

The case fans are only part of the problem. You also have the video card fan, which is usually the loudest fan in an "enthusiast" setup (a la NVIDIA's infamous "leafblower" fan), the CPU fan, the chipset fan (if any), and then the power supply fan(s).

The CPU fan can not only be replaced with a quiet model, but can usually be tuned to a slower setting in the bios. I've never heard of a chipset fan, the power supply fan(s) are bought with the case, as I said above, and yes there are some specific video card fans that are loud (ish) but in general they are no louder than the other fans. Add to that a case that's designed to be fairly quiet (not much sound escapes good cases) and you've got yourself a silent runner.

Chipset fan (http://www.pandadesigns.com/misc/chipset_fan.jpg). I'm not sure what you mean by "the power supply fan(s) are bought with the case". It is very rare for any case with a bundled power supply to have a "quiet" power supply -- the Sonata line by Antec being one of those exceptions.

Since when is "sheer laziness" not an excuse?

The loudest thing in my case is the ancient Delta fan on the CPU.  I got it and the HS back when the Intertron was abuzz with the new "copper core" junk.  Works well enough and I AM LAZY so I have not bothered to buy/install something made in the last four years.

If I wasn't lazy, hell, I could do all kinds of crazy shit.  Or just something basic like running a 120mm fan instead of a 80mm, maybe with a fancy heatpipe-laced copper flower.  The fan on the 6800GT can't compare to that Delta for noise output, and since I am only using a Nforce2 mobo, the chipsets are cooled by mere convection.  I don't even have heatspreaders on my RAM.

Man, I am depressing myself.  You might be un-lazy-ing me.

I could care less if it sounds like the deck of an aircraft carrier when it is running as long as it does what I want. My speakers and TV have adjustable volume controls on them  :-D

Yeah, well my wife has a lot to say about how loud I play my games.  She also gets angry that I can't hear her over my fans.  My rig is the reason we have those gigahertz phones that double as an intercom system.

Even better!  :evil:

2nd night of gaming without incident. I would say I am in the clear, but I know better. As soon as I get complacent, it will fuck me over. I am Charlie Brown.

Bhodi speaks the truth:  if you are willing to spend a few bucks, a silent system is very attainable.  Here's what I did last Christmas:

(Keep in mind I use my PC for two main purposes: gaming, and recording music.  Having 4 leafblowers going at 80db just isn't acceptable when you are recording
an acoustic guitar.  I have a few tracks with a high pitched whine in the background that is ugly as hell).

1) First, tackle the PSU.  There are a lot of silent or nearly silent PSU's out there.  I went with a Zalman ZM400B-APS.  It has a large 120mm fan that is controlled depending on the case temperature.  For the vast majority of the time, it runs right around the 25db level.  Inside the case, it cannot be heard at all.  You can find it for about $85 bucks online.

2) Next as the CPU.  I went with a CNPS7000A-Cu from Zalman again.  It went for about $30.  I run it at the 5V setting (which is right about 20-25db) and even after a few hours of Planetside or Far Cry the CPU temp never goes above 40C.  It is quite large and heavy (looks like a big orange mushroom), so you need to make sure there is clearance in the case
before you try to use it.

3) Next was the video card.  I went with a ZM80D-HP which is a fanless heat pipe cooler.  Yes, you guessed it, from Zalman.  I'm running a 9800 Pro in this rig at the moment, and I thought it would be adequate.  However the card would overheat after about 15 mins during games with no fan.  So I got the optional 80mm fan that mounts to the heatsink and ran that at 5V.  Maximum video card temp is now about 48-50C under maximum load.  This is the loudest component in the PC now however it's just above audible (perhaps 30-35db) with the case open.  With the case closed I can't hear it.

4) Hard drives.  My hard drives were already pretty quiet, however I could still hear the seek clicking.  My case is a rack mount that's bolted into my studio rig,
and the clicking would transmit through the case into the frame and sound a lot louder to me.  So I got a Smart Drive (http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=smartdrive) and mounted my drive inside of it.  It's an aluminum enclosure that has a copper plate to transmit heat to the outside, however it's stuffed with foam to deaden the sound.  Now the hard drive is inaudible.

5) Case fans:  I got two Panaflo 120mm case fans, and re-wired the connectors to use 5V instead of 12V.  They spin at about 900 rpm each and move enough air
at that voltage to keep the case temp reasonable.  They make very little sound.

Total cost was about $200, a lot to spend on cooling, but I went from leaf blower to dead silent with no loss in performance or heat instability issues.  Now, I have to look at the LED's on the front to see if it's on or not:  even in a dead silent room, I can't hear anything from the PC except for a barely perceptible sound of air moving.  It's no problem to record in the same room as the PC now.