Do I need extra cooling?

[mark43]

So, I have a 8800GTX in an Antec P182 case. Everything is reasonably quiet, but when I start giving the graphics card a bit of a workout by playing a game then it does tend to get a fair bit louder. Now its not terribly noisy and it doesn’t particularlu bother me, but it does seem that the fan on the card is having to work a fair bit harder to keep it cool.

I just wondered if this is normal or if I should be doing more to improve the air flow? I just have the standard case fans at the moment, should I fit a further intake fan to the front of the case where the upper HDD bay was? Is it not really a problem if the noise isnt bothering me, or could it be getting to hot, is there an easy way to check the temp?

Anyone with any thoughts on this?

 

[J.D]

I know N-Tune and ATI Tool give you a temp reading. Also if you hear your fan spinning up now and again I wouldn't worry about it too much as these cards do get very, very hot. Even though, the cooler that hardware runs, the longer it lasts so it wouldn't be a bad idea to cool it further but not imperative.