Hey all, Im having some cooling issues with my PC. it is a custom built with an AMD athlon 64 6000+ x2, gigabyte m-61 s3 motherboard, and 2 gig of patriot ddr2. I have a 120 mm intake fan in the front, 80 mm exhaust in the back, an arctic bay freezer (2 60 mm fans in a tube blowing exhaust out the front in a 5.25 in bay) and my PSU has a 80 mm fan sucking exhaust out. im using the stock heatsink. with this setup, my system has always run about 100 degrees F under load system temp, and 113 degrees CPU temp. not a problem there, however, a friend of mine loaned me one of his nvidia 8600 GTs, and I put that in, and started havin problems. after about 2 hours of playing, my system jumped up to 120 degrees, and CPU to 160. i moved the tower into a better place, tweaked my fan speeds up, and used riva tuner to up the fan speed on the card. doing all this barely keeps the CPU temp under 140 under load. if I take the cover off, it drops it down to 130, however, this increases noise, and id still like to get the CPU back down below 120 if possible. Ive thought about cutting some airholes and making a bracket of sorts in the cover, maybe mounting a fan on it, or installing water cooling, though im hesitant to do that since it will void my processors warranty. also, I am not planning on keeping this card, it is only a loaner, I will be upgrading to an ATI 3870 x2 in a few weeks hopefully, and im worried ill have similar problems with it. right now, im thinking drilling a hole in the case (the case is like 5 years old so im not afraid to cut it up) and mounting a fan over the CPU is my best bet, however does anyone else have any ideas that might work better? the system still idles at the temps it was before, maybe a little higher but not much, its just under load (like playing COD4) that it gets hot. anyway, im open to suggestions, thanks!

oh yes, and I also have windows vista ultimate 64 bit

First off temperature wise it is most convenient to use Celsius figures.

Nvidia 8000 series GPU's normally run @ 60c stock (140f). They do not fluctuate much. Nothing will bring this down short of liquid cooling.

Did you monitor your CPU temperature prior to this graphics card?

Try testing outside of graphics. Say Prime 95 or Super Pi. These load the CPU and not the GPU.

Are you having noticeable problems or are you just concerned about the numbers?

I doubt that additional case fans would make any noticeable change.

Liquid cooling is the way to go.


How many watts is your PSU. It could also be straining and producing heat if it is upping voltages.

Have you monitored the voltages?

Does this 8600 have an independent power lead?

Is your BIOS set to Defaults?

as I have stated up there, previous temperatures for the system is 100 F or about 40 degrees C system temp under load, and about 113 F or around 50 degrees C (not to good with the conversion, those are rough estimates) that was before I installed the video card. and the system is performing fine, its not slowing down or giving me issues, Im just concerned about the numbers. I am using a 600 watt echo star PSU, and I honestly dont think thats the problem, as the friend I borrowed it from is running a similar system, same processor, just with an ASUS board, and 2 of these things, plus a few other accesories I dont have. the only real big difference is his case provides far better cooling then mine does. (mine is smaller, more compact with not as good wire management) also, when I remove the side cover of my case, it drops the temp a good 10 degrees C. which is what is making me think a fan over the CPU would improve it. the nvidia card i am using does not have any extra power leads, though the card im going to replace it with does. as far as the PSU heating up the cae, im not sure that is the case as it has an 80 mm fan inside the case that takes the air inside the case and blows it out through the PSU and out the back of the computer via another 80 mm fan, and there are exhaust ports on the back of the PSU, but I have one of the 60 mm exhaust fans from the arctic bay freezer right under those sucking that hot air out. I am pretty sure the CPU temp being hot is a result of the VIdeo card heating up the case, and since the case is hot it raises the temp of the CPU as well.

oh yes, and bios is set to default, however default for this system takes PCIE as priority and automatically shuts off the integrated with there is a vid card present.

Personally I would wait and see what the new system has to offer.

The difference with Nvidia 8800 or the ATI cards you have chosen is that they have their own exhaust system. Unlike the 8600 they will not add heat into the case.

That being said I just looked at those cards: ATI 3870 x2

You are going to use two of them?

If your case is a mid tower they will be a tight fit lengthwise (even one).

There will also be a 'tight fit' with a 600Watt PSU not to mention the dedicated power lines involved.

The cards offer adapters but they will not preform up to their potential without dedicated 6 and 8 pin lines direct from the PSU. You really want an SLi/Crossfire ready PSU at least 750Watts if you are going to run two.

Anyway the heat should be much less of an issue. These cards exhaust their heat.

I am only using one of these cards as I only have one PCIE 16 slot. technically, it says i should be able to run it on a 600 watt psu, I really hate to dump more money on another PSU. I was just thinkin id try to solve this cooling issue b4 i got the new card. but thanks for your advice, I think i will take ur advice and get the card, and see what happens. like I said I have no performance issues with this one, it runs marvelously, no system slow downs or anything, its just running hot. anyway, thanks for your advice, will update as things change.

ok. I got confused with the x 2. I thought at first you meant to run two cards.

I hope you understand what I mean by exhausting the heat.

These cards are "double thick" in the sense they will take two PCI covers off the back of the case.

The lower cover is the fan exhaust which is housed in the unit. Thus exhausting the heat rather then putting it into the case. Again the heat will be about the same on both cards @ 60c stock.

Im getting mixed reviews on how well the cooling for it works, but we will see, but yes i am looking at the one 3870 x2 (as 1 video card, 2 GPUS) and yes its gonna be a tight fit but it will fit i did the measuring. ive been doing some tweaking with the fan speeds on the system now and its keeping it at barely manageable rates, it really is a lousy cooling fan on this particular 8600, I now see why my friend uses the PCI slot exhaust fans in his system, wish I had one, I used to, but I put it in a build for my brother whoops lol. anyway, yeah as far as being doube thick, doesnt bother me, I have 2 PCIe 1x slots before I get to my standard PCI slots. I ordered the mobo with only 1 PCIE 16 slot on purpose cuz i wanted the extra PCI slots, and I have absolutly no use for the PCIE 1x slots at all at this moment, so I have plenty of space downwards before I have any space issues, lengthwise i have enough room, just have to move a hard drive and maybe cut out some of my 3.5 in rack to allow airflow. we will see when that time comes. prolly gonna order it tonight or tomorrow.

P.S. and yes I understand how it cools, Ive just been getting mixed reports on how well the system works.

Hey all update. I got the 3870 x2 and installed it. like i thought it got hot, however, I manged to up the fan using riva tuner, and got all the temps-CPU, system, and the video card GPU all run extremely cool. however, It is giving me some fits. Ill get on to play COD4, and it will play perfect for about 10 minutes, and then it will crash, either giving me a grayish screen with lines or a black screen, from where I have to press the reset button. it is always preceded about a minute ahead of time by a short freeze which it recovers from easily. I got on and played an older game, joint ops, had no issues whatsoever with it, then played a game demo that came with the video cards included software, and it crashed as well. I have installed the latest drivers, and am trying to do a fresh install of them to see if it fixes anything. am going to email tech support as well, though I was wonderin if any of you knew of a quick fix for this, it sounds like a driver issue to me, as it runs all my normal programs so far just fine, web browsing, word processors, everything but COD4 and the game demo so far, in fact. (which are the newest games I have) it is just those two, as far as i can see all my temps are fine, I have an adequate power supply, I just can't figure out why its doin this. anyway, any help would be appreciated, thanks!