Hardware troubles
Jarod | November 24, 2007My new PC is here, and it works. Now.
For some reason the nVidia drivers do not automatically adjust the fan speed on my graphics card. That means whenever I start up a game, the card overheats – and the PC crashes. After running a bunch of system tests (and asking Mr. Google) I found out that the card’s fan runs at 29% of its full capacity by default. And it’s configured to only spin up when the card reaches 100°C. Of course, it crashes at 90°. I have now learned how to use RivaTuner to automatically change the fan speed and everything’s okay, but it took me a night and a less experienced user would have had to return the card.
Free hint: if you want to play Cryis with all settings on “very high” in DirectX 10, you better don’t buy a new PC, but rather some kind of cluster. Or travel to the future and grab some gear there. Anyway, a “tweaked” DirectX 9 mode looks just as good and runs twice as fast, so I’ll stick to that. More details next week.
On another note, I caught me a flue again. I seem rather vulnerable to illness this year, maybe I should finally start listening to my mom (after 27 years) and eat more vegetables…
Interesting about the card Jarod. My 8800GT seems to behave in a similar way but my fan is at 60% (idle temp 48 deg c) Fortunately mine came with some software which allows me to manually set the fan speed as default. At 100% temp drops to 40 deg c which is still a bit high (and noisy ! ). Am currently checking out alternative VGA coolers as the stock one is pretty crap.
Whoops, that should read 58 deg C and 50 deg C not 48 and 40
Mine has an idle temp of about 62°. That sounds much but is very stable and seems not to pose a problem. My card is overclocked by default btw. Let me know how your custom cooler works out!
After some tweaking with my provided software I have set a fixed speed of 65%. This gives an idle of approx 40 Deg C and a temp under load of around 70 Deg.C . Currently there is no specific 8800GT cooler although I believe a couple of companies will be releasing one soon. After trawling some forums this cooler appears to work well.
http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Cooler/VGAnCHIPnMEM/CL-G0102/cl-g0102.asp