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Can anyone explain why my 7900GT is running so hot?

SirCanealot

SirCanealot

SirCanealot

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Joined
24 Jul 2005
Posts
482
Hi all.

Sorry for bringing up such an OLD card, but I'm hoping someone here might remember a thing or two about them :P

Basically, I've wanted to upgrade my machine for AGES, but... no money what so ever. So I've decided to kick and drag my socket 939 system into 2010 (even if it's on fire, I don't mind, I need the extra mhz for Batman psyx!!!!!!!???!11) :P

Anyway, long story short, I read up recently about 7900GT volt mods (anyone here familiar with them?) and volt modded mine. It worked, but the card ended up getting into the 80-85 degrees range with the core overclocked from 450-650, so I started looking around for a better cooler for it. Came across the Zalman VF700-AlCu which was fairly cheap and had good reviews, and there ended up being one on ebay in London for a tenna. Went and collected it, installed it and... the card doesn't run much cooler at all :(

I've tried re-seating it (thought I used too much thermal paste the first time round) and that didn't help. I also tried taking the volt mod off and trying the cooler (gets to about 65 under load -- still not great). Then re-applied the volt mod (going from 1.2v to 1.4 instead of the 1.55 I had it at before), and it's going at about 75 under load now, which is still way too high.

The only things I can think of are:
My artic silver 5 is suspect: it's old and hasn't been kept vertical its whole life (however, I seated a new processor with it and the processor is running VERY cool, and I mixed it before I started using it again);

I've got very unlucky and simply have a chipset that runs warm;

Or I've not mounted the Zalman right? I can't see how as it seems to have plenty of contact with the GPU... The only thing I can think of is I haven't got it in the normal bracket screw hole, instead I had to use a screw hole next to the normal one to make it fit, but would that make much difference?

Any ideas? I have the fan on full obviously, and I can't think of anything else I might be doing wrong... It's an Antec P180 case with 2 fans pulling air and I recently put in a fan at the front to push air, so the air in the case isn't too hot...

Thanks very much! :)
 
75C under load is fine for that card. Anything up to ~90C.

Above that you start getting problems with the RAMDACs randomly not working. Same problems on all the 6x00 and 7x00 series of cards. :)
 
75c load isn't really that high, is there any reason you don't want to be at such a temperature?

It's old tech built on old manufacturing processes, they were hot cards anyway.

It's only really the latest 5800s where we've been spoilt with low temp cards.

Some 4800s ran hotter load temps and it was perfectly normal for them.
 
I've read to try and keep it around 65c load for best overclocking/lifespan (not that I'm worrying too much about that any more, haha) results. (Edit: read a few things now than say 80-90 is fine, yeah :))

It just confuses me why the Zalman doesn't seem to be working very well. I SHOULD be getting less heat than I am. That's what I'm mostly concerned about...

Or maybe the VF700 is less of a good cooler than I thought (goes to read more reviews)...

Thanks :)
 
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The VF700 isn't going to cool such a hot card down easily, it's not a very large cooler compared to some of todays VGA coolers (even stock ones). What's your cable management like?

To me, the temps sound fine, and actually pretty reasonable for a 7900GT. No reason to want lower ones unless you're clocking it to within an inch of it's life, in which case I'd suggest selling it and buying a better 8*** series card or newer second hand for well under £100. That way, game performance would improve much more, and there'd be no need to overclock and risk killing a card prematurely, leaving you with no card.
 
alexhull24 said:
The VF700 isn't going to cool such a hot card down easily, it's not a very large cooler compared to some of todays VGA coolers (even stock ones). What's your cable management like?

To me, the temps sound fine, and actually pretty reasonable for a 7900GT. No reason to want lower ones unless you're clocking it to within an inch of it's life, in which case I'd suggest selling it and buying a better 8*** series card or newer second hand for well under £100. That way, game performance would improve much more, and there'd be no need to overclock and risk killing a card prematurely, leaving you with no card.
Click to expand...

Seems I was under the impression that the VF700 cooled a bit more than it does. Oh well :)

Cable management used to be terrible, but I spent a while improving it a lot when I installed a front case fan. Unfortunately, it's a bit weak, so I might move it into the lower bay to give the PSU/HDs a bit more air and put a more powerful one in the main chamber to try and keep this thing cool.

And I got one of the LGA1156 mobos in the sale a while ago, so not much point dumping money on an 8800 or whatever when I'm going to save up for a completely new rig next year :)

Anyway, cheers for the help. Been out of work a while, but hopefully it'll settle in soon and I can start saving. Mhz nom nom nom nom :D
 
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