Looking for help with computer overheating

T

Typewriter

New Member
I put my computer together about a year ago, and it's a pretty good system (or so I think).

I've got 4 gigs of ram
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103759
X1950 Saphire Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102070
And my case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811125448

I started playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 and the computer would get a bunch of artifacts and crash after 30 minutes to an hour. I was disappointed, but looked up the issue and saw that the game seemed to give a lot of people with good systems trouble. So I played through it with minimal settings and only had the occasional issue. Since then I only played the occasional game, and I had a bunch more heating issues - but I figured it was because my part of the apartment was really hot - so I put the computer right next to the AC vent.

Then I moved out of there and into my current place. I was fine for awhile then started having heating issues again. I bought a new fan (one of those that has a bendy neck - so that you can put it where you want). and placed it under the graphics card blowing up (hopefully to help clear out hot air from there).

Now I've picked up Crysis. It recommends I play on medium settings, but that only lasts 10 minutes before overheating. On low settings I can make it maybe 20. I've tried changing the flow of fans, taking off the side and putting a full size house fan right there blowing in, with the front and rear fans blowing out. Nothing seems to work. I currently have fan on it's side with the other side off(thinking maybe the heat will will rise up out of the case a little bit). The two front fans are blowing in, and the two rear are blowing out, and my current temperatures are:

SpeedFan:
Local: 35C
Remote: 33C
System: 39C
CPU: 39C
AUX: 38C
Core: 34C

and Catalyst control center says my card is at 37C

If anybody has any thoughts / ideas on what I could do to lower the temperatures a little bit I'd really appreciate it. Am I just going to have to buy a big tub and fill it full of mineral oil and dunk the whole PC into it?
 
Welcome to CF:)

Those temps look great, actually. They are when the system is Idle, correct? Have you run a second temp monitoring program to get a second set of readings? SpeedFan is nice, and if you have a C2D, Core Temp is a favorite of many folks.

If possible, could you start to play one of the games and post what the temps are during?
 
Thanks for the greeting.

Yeah - those were the idle temperatures. I'm on my way out of the house again, but when I get in I'll download those other programs and give them a shot.

As far as checking them during gameplay - I can do that early on probably, but once my screen gets artifacty the likelihood of minimizing without it crashing is low.

Thanks - and I'll get that other info tonight or tomorrow night.
 
I tried out the demo version of everest ultimate(core temp doesn't like vista 64 bit), and wasn't exactly sure what to try so I did the system stability test. Within 10 minutes the cpu was about where you expected (60), but it didn't go up again after that, and I stopped it after half an hour. I also tried downloading the demo version of 3dmark06 and it ran as well as I expected with no hitches. I also downloaded cpu-z but wasn't sure what to do with it.
 
OK. So I had tried doing a bunch of tests, and I was going to start the game, then wait 5-10 minutes and get temps.

I no longer think this is heating (since it happened so soon after the game started) but I'm completely confused. Thanks in advance for any help anyone has to offer.

So, I start the game, and tell it to detect optimal settings. Keep in mind that at this point the game has been up for less than one minute. Here's what happened while it was detecting:
 

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I've seen this before on my comp...just not with the delay. Exactly the same artifact pattern, though. My fix was to re-install the latest video card drivers from nVidia's website. In your case, that would be ATI's website...

...I shouldn't have to add that last part, but some people...

...anyhoo, I can't remember what brought that problem on. Usually, artifacting from temperatures doesn't begin until you get up to the 3D rendering in-game, in my experience. But I've never worked with an ATI.

My first solution to every problem is to update drivers :).
 
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So, it turns out it was a driver issue after all.

I had tried uninstalling/reinstalling them several times before (the last time being less than a week ago). It seems that some file had gotten corrupted during the initial install a year ago, and whenever I uninstalled - it didn't delete that file. Someone advised me to open task manager and end a few processes before trying to uninstall again. I did so, then reinstalled - and now everything works just fine.

Thanks again for all your help guys.
 
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