Where are the VRM chips on a GTX280?

[Dutch Guy]

Recently I am having some strange issues with Fallout3 and NFS Shift where the game locks and after a few seconds it unlocks but all text is garbled and unreadable.

I am suspecting that the VRM chips are too hot as I ran GPUz and it said the VDDC temps were >110C

So I thought I would point a spare 120mm fan towards that part of the card but where are they located?

 

[Dutch Guy]

What cooler do you have on the card, with the stock cooler you shouldn't be able to even see them. I have water cooling with the vrm's cooled with individual copper heatsinks and a fan pointing at them, in games they will go up to 60-70°C, in Furmak they will touch 100°C.

Stock cooler, but I have the MSI SuperOC version that has default 700/1400/2300Mhz speeds so maybe they raised the voltage to get the card stable?

What I did though is remove the side of my case and a result of that is that the fan on the card runs slower as the core is cooler but maybe that has a negative effect on the VRM's as there is less airflow from the fan, sound logical?

 

[Dutch Guy]

I also noticed with newer drivers the fan speed seems to have a habit of sticking on default (40%) even in 3D mode and ignore temps

Ah, I have the latest drivers, maybe it is sticking to 40% (long shot though)

 

[Dutch Guy]

Tried last night with GPU-Z running and using Furmark, the VDDC temps shoot towards 110C and stay there, it was stable for a few minutes though, the fan did spin up to 100% though so that isn't a problem.

Maybe the 190.62 drivers just aren't stable enough on my system, any recommendation on what other drivers to use with a GTX280?