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khenry
So here I was thinking my build was over and done with, once my preferred PSU had been installed. I opened the case and gave the cabling a second round of general management and reconnected my CPU exhaust fan’s power lead which had become dislodged.
However, I never thought I would see myself typing the following words; following tweaking, I played through and completed Crysis with no further crashes to the Radeon 3850 GPU. Its temperatures no longer breached 65 degrees when playing Cryis compared to the GPU’s crash temperature wall of 90 degrees. Before I could celebrate with a replay on hard difficulty, rather than Crysis proving hard to tackle, it was Call of Duty 4 which proved the more difficult game to configure.
CoD 4 is the one game where a lack of AA could really make the game ugly (even compared to Crysis), but one setting, Specular Map, could stop the game looking as washed out as before, without the use of AA. It didn’t prove reliable, sadly, as the game continued to crash out even if I can get 3-4 hours from it before this happens, whatever the ambient temperature. A jump of 60 degrees from the GPU alone was weird, because the twin 120mm and side 80mm fans, not to mention the 90mm cooler on the Artic 64 Pro, all keep my CPU and general case temp to the 30 degree mark and at the time of the crash, still failed to exceed 35-40 degrees now that the Antec PSU has been installed, which maintains a third 120mm fan to take out the last vestiges of hot air. By elimination, that points to the ATi single-slot reference cooler which is supposed to work, and according to all CPC tests (particularly issue 54’s), was supposed to play at my preferred res even with no AA to jack up the output of heat. I’m not saying it’s rubbish, especially when any Source engine game (including those making use of the new Source SDK circa the Orange Box) continues to work flawlessly.
Unless I have a sample card running hotter than the usual norm, (which I doubt, considering its 290-292W power consumption in its two separate labs tests, and no failures when different writers benchmarked CoD 4), I think I was accustomed to my 6800GT with a Zalman third party cooler which cooled not only itself but also the case space around it. Thankfully, within the last two issues there have been two alternative GPU coolers but this time I’ll plump for the Akasa Vortexx Neo reviewed in issue 59. Its £10 price advantage will equate to free delivery compared to the modern Zalman, and it’s much more likely that a wider range of stores will stock Akasa hardware and I can throw a replacement mouse into the box whilst I’m there.
If the reviewer had no more Crysis crashes using the 3rd party cooler but I was able to tweak that game to work on the reference GPU HSF, here’s hoping it will do the same for CoD 4, when the air is getting vented out of the back of my case again. I’m also happy that it will keep my chosen blue lighting theme going with its UV looks and sport a larger overall cooling fan*. If all else fails I can finally reconnect my second side panel fan which sits at the level of the GPU.
However, despite my new build giving me another interesting twist that won’t cost me too much money to fix, I’ll never trust the lower of two cards in an emerging ATi range ever again. Any graphics card I purchase from now on will have a dual slot cooler from the start, as having to do upgrades to my upgrades to finally attain a stable rig is limiting my gaming options until it’s sorted out.
*Akasa reported no specs in any review or news coverage regarding the Vortexx GPU HSF cooling fan but I am going to use Akasa’s separated 80mm blue LED fans as a rough guide, being the same physical size. It’s rated at 2,500RPM and shifting 32.37 CFM with a noise level of 23db(A). If you went to PC World and bought that fan separately for the side of your case, they cost me £4 but may prove more expensive outside sale times.
The nightmare of an air-cooled GPU. I recently upgraded my GPU from a BFG 7900gt to a BFG 8800gt OC2. I have a very cool Thermaltake Armour case with 25cm side fan, 2 x rear fans, 1 x top and front fan. My new GPU with automatic fan speed was hitting 100c in-game which caused momentary screen failures. A friend told me I had to set my GPU’s fan control manually to at least 70%, I did so and this helped reduce the in-game GPU temp to about 72c. At 70% GPU fan speed, the noise was similar to that of a vacuum cleaner. I knew that I would not be able to live with that kind of noise for very long, so I purchased a full cover XSPC GPU waterblock and my GPU temp never rises above 40c in-game. On a cool summer night, the full load GPU temp will typically be in the region of 37c and 28c for the GDDR.
I should point out these temps are with quite a big GPU overclock as well.
The best thing is, the absence of noise since I plumbed the 8800gt in to my water system.
[…] Master Cooler A jump of 60 degrees from the card alone was weird, because the twin 120mm and side 80mm fans, not to mention the 90mm cooler on the Artic 64 Pro, all keep my CPU and general case temp to the 30 degree mark and at the time of the crash, …Kenneth Henry - http://custompc.co.uk/blogs/khenry […]