34 réponses à ce sujet

[twistedkatana]

so i've been trying to figure out why this game is causing my system to completely shut off while waiting for DLC to download. i've left ati catalyst control center open on my other monitor and i've seen it just go all the way up to 99 degrees C and then kapoot.

windows 7 64 bit
amd athlon x2 6000+ 3.1ghz
ati radeon HD 4830
2gb ddr2 800 ram
ati catalyst 9.11

now this is new since my previous problem was the game constantly crashing after several minutes of gameplay when i was on windows XP just a few days ago. i was kinda desperate to get this thing fixed and it was about time i did a fresh install of an OS, so i picked up windows 7 and installed it. the overheating is a problem that has occourred since upgrading the OS. i'm really disappointed that i haven't been able to play this game over the past week or two since i've bought it. is there anyone with a similar problem and is there anything i can do about it? am i just gonna have to wait for bioware to make a patch to roll out on steam or for AMD to put out new drivers? now that i'm hurting for money i kinda wished i never bought the game if i was never going to be able to play it.

[Gorath Alpha]

Software simply never is the cause of overheating.  Poor cooling is the cause.  It may be the card itself, having a dying fan, or all clogged with dust, or the enclosure's venting may be clogged, keeping air flow restricted.  All software is able to do is "work" the hardware at a high level.  It's always up to the card's designer(s) to provide adequate cooling, and the card's user to provide adequate cleaning and access to air flow..

Gorath
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Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 19 février 2010 - 05:34 .

[Jab0r]

DA shouldn't be taxing your graphics card too much sitting at the menu - I would suspect that it is pegging your CPU at 100%, and that is what is overheating.

I would second opening up your case and cleaning all the dust out.

[SHartin70]

The fan is dead on your video card. Time for a new one.

[Jab0r]

SHartin70 wrote...

The fan is dead on your video card. Time for a new one.

More than likely it's just clogged with dust. A can of compressed air is a whole lot cheaper than a new fan and heatsink.

[Gorath Alpha]

Jab0r wrote...

A can of compressed air is a whole lot cheaper than a new fan and heatsink.

And it's LOADS  easier to deal with! 

G

[Tosheroon]

+1 for dusty heatsinks.

[Matthew Young CT]

Would you drive your car without oil? Your poor poor card, you're murdering it



Can't believe how few people maintain their PC.

[Jab0r]

Though I feel I have to share my story of graphics card torture ... HD4850, fairly clogged with dust. Running 75 degrees idle.

Just firing up NWN2 or Mass Effect, the temperature rose rapidly into the hundreds, culminating in thermal shutdown at 120.



I actually finished Mass Effect with it like that, through judicious use of going to the menu whenever it got to about 115, to give the card a chance to cool down.

[Matthew Young CT]

That is one tough card, wow. Most would artifact and die long before that!

[twistedkatana]

crysis doesn't seem to have the same effect and i get it running on high at 1680x1050. far cry 2, fallout 3, left 4 dead, any of my games don't do this to my video card. it is just dragon age.

[Gorath Alpha]

(Due to the strange choices that were made designing the Social Forums' software, a thread that is getting close to two years old isn't showing up as being three or four months older than the actual date of my comment here, when I added it, over a year ago, now.  Both the OP's first and last messages are simply "a year", not 20 months.  And I wrote my own added comment -- below -- some 16 months or so ago, I think -- it is now June 8th, 2011, as I add this paragraph using the Edit capability.)

It was a waste of time for the OP to have answered with any comparison of games.  There is no relevance there; none of those share the same engine,  and we now must guess that he did solve the problem, or destroy the video card from giving it poor cleaning.  However, I wanted a thread with the word "overheating" in the title, like this one.  I like to be able to find some of topics I want to use again, as easily as possible, and there were only three with that word in this forum.

A couple of years ago, I copied an article on PC cooling from the NWN2 forums on Bioware's old ("Legacy") forum site, and with apologies to the now-forgotten author, I'll post it here (was it from Kiwi?)  I don't consider the question that any game ever caused physical harm to any hardware to be worth arguing about.  It's been refuted all too many times and places already.  What can happen is a pet in the household is shedding more than usual, or is a different breed, that sheds more hair and dander, or some other environmental / hardware sourced vector, period. 

Maybe the PC has accidentally been moved, so it is no longer able to ventilate properly.  Perhaps some fan(s) started wearing out, but quietly, without loud squealing bearings.  There are a variety of environmental changes that can be disruptive.  I will just proceed with the discussion of better cooling. 

                                        Keeping Cool

Although this subject is covered widely all around the internet's technical web sites, I (uncertain author's personal pronoun) didn't start this essay with any LINKS immediately available to suggest for references.  I've added a few, after the fact  (I hope I didn't pick one that violently disagrees with anything I've written). 

Problem: your CPU or GPU runs too hot, and the system either slows itself down radically, or shuts off for self-protection.  What to do? 

The game playing community uses some PC components that will run fairly hot, in its search for better game-playing performance.  These include Raptor high rpm Hard Drives, Overclocked dual cored and quad-cored CPUs, and really super-hot-running 3D GPUs. 

If a new gamer or new system re-builder is involved in a game PC project, his/ her experience with controlling overheating may be inadequate.  There are excellent aftermarket GPU coolers available from Arctic Cooling to replace the stock heat sink/ fan combos, and some very efficient CPU coolers for those old dinosaur Intel Prescott processors that run like miniature space heaters, but you do need to know that those aftermarket parts do exist.  It should be noted that with the 2012 release of AMD's combo CPU / GPU, two high-heat signature items are about to join, with the result a potential competitor for the old P4's high-heat crown. 

Current gaming cases feature twinned 120 mm fans to move a large air volume at a lower rpm, making less noise than smaller, faster spinning fans.  The intake is in the lower front, close to the Hard Drive bays, and the exhaust is upper rear, close to the CPU (at least, on an ATX style motherboard).  But even those won't work if dust buildup isn't controlled, if the assorted cables aren't neatly tucked away to allow free air flow, and if the case isn't allowed to sit where ordinary room air circulation can bring it cool fresh air, and allow the hot air it wants to get rid of, to move on out of the space behind the box. 

Stuffing a game PC into a narrow cabinet intended for a cool-running business PC from the last century is a quick way to kill the computer.  Crowding the back of the case too close to a wall is equally bad. 

Many branded PCs' cases have only a very small "lip" intake opening in front, at the very bottom of the bezel (front plastic cover), which is very easily blocked if the PC sits on the floor on carpeting, even low pile varieties, so it's necessary to raise it out of contact with the carpet, if only through cutting a piece of cardboard with a slightly larger size than the footprint of the machine. 

Various utilities will report temperatures and allow the gamer to keep track of his efforts to control what is happening.  These include AIDA32, ATI Tools, ATI Tray Tools, Riva Tuner, SiSoft Sandra, and Speedfan.    

For any reader wanting additional cooling information, I have now done my own Google in the subject area, and some quick scans of available material.  This article appears similar in scope to mine, although somewhat more detailed: 

http://www.compukiss.../article766.htm

Here's another: http://www.smartcomp...55r04/55r04.asp

http://www.pcnineone...o/cooling1.html

http://pcworld.about...p192id52328.htm

I hope all of the links are still good! 

(Thanks once again, author, whose credit line was lost!)

Gorath
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Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 08 juin 2011 - 07:08 .

[Skuggans]

Gorath Alpha wrote...

Software isn't the cause of overheating.  Poor cooling is the cause.  It may be the card itself, having a dying fan, or all clogged with dust, or the enclosure's venting may be clogged, keeping air flow restricted. 

Gorath
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That is not true, bad drivers like the 190.xx from NVidia overheats graphics cards from NVidia, running the latest will make the card gain both performance and drop the temperature with aroumd 25-30C.

[Gorath Alpha]

Drivers are another kettle of fish, and nVIDIA seems to use week-old mackeral from time to time (the 196.75s)   Most of the production run of Geforce 8n00M laptop GPUs had a defective firmware included that ran the fans slower beyond a point in an overheating cycle and then a different part of the GPU had to recognize the danger and shut down before the damage was irrepairable.

Some other Geforce 8n00 cards seem to have unusual heating and cooling cycling, but I keep on repeating that games aren't what causes the overheating.  The hardware may be "working hard", and software certainly can cause *THAT*, but it is the designers of the hardware who are at fault when the part is unable to cool itself at WHATEVER level of work it can reach. All it takes is the smallest amount of a Google (search) to learn the truth in what I'm saying.

Gorath
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Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 02 mai 2010 - 01:59 .

[CrustyCat]

I am currently running a 9800GX2 and when I first started running DA:O I was easily reaching 90C+ for temps. I took the covers off and blew it out with air and now it generally is around 80C max. Usually mid 70's while gaming.

[Tyrax Lightning]

I'm taking my new puder build cooling needs VERY seriously. I chose this Case for my next build with Ventilation potential as top priority:

Broadway Com Corp FX-Series FX-SILVER Black / Silver SECC Steel Computer Case

It's 2 upper ROM Bays have a fold-out door, but the potential of this feature wasn't realized. Other than that, this Case is SWEET!!! It comes with 3 Case Fans, & I tested them, & they rock! (Wonderful change of pace from the norm, of 'Stock' stuff reeking like Darkspawn.)

The front Intake is a 140mm, the rear outtake & upper rear side Case Fans are 120mm. The lower rear side Case Fan Port is not pre-fanned, i'm gonna fill it with a COOLER MASTER R4-L2R-20AC-GP 120mm Blue LED Case Fan in outtake mode.

Modifié par Tyrax Lightning, 25 février 2010 - 05:28 .

[Gorath Alpha]

My primary "loaner" box is in a Broadway case, which was on sale at the time I bought it, else I might have bought another Cooler Master Centurion then (I've had three of those), and liked those, but so did the friends / relatives who inherited them when I chose something else, like CM's 590 and 690 (talking about 140 mm fans in the top, back, and access panels), plus 120 mm on the hard drive cage -- but I've left one each of the top exhaust fans' mount grillls unfilled in those cases.

Oops.  I was going to say, that each time that PC has gone out for use, it has drawn compliments (it is blue, with a window, and has blue LEDs on the fans).  My daughter in law liked it well enough I thought about getting another, so that she could have one, but that model doesn't seem to be available now, so she is going to get a blue Elite on her birthday this June, instead. 

Gorath
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Modifié par Gorath Alpha, 25 février 2010 - 06:59 .

[Tyrax Lightning]

Give my model of Broadway Case a try. If Black/Silver isn't your cup of tea, NewEgg has a few other colors available of this type of Case.

[Gorath Alpha]

The one I have was influenced by the Alienware cases' look. Not really as practical as I usually choose, since it has a door over the optical drives, but it's a proper right-handers' door, opening on the left to be out of my way when open. It seems as if most of the case designers must be lefties over on the Pacific Rim.

This one kinda catches the feel of the Broadway I have been using, if not the style:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811144193

(And to all the rest, I'm sorry to be somewhat off topic here. I'll be good, I promise.)

[Tyrax Lightning]

Mine holds more Case Fans.

With 3 120mm Case Fans, & 1 140mm Case Fan on duty in this Case, my Radeon HD 4850 shouldn't have any excuse at all to overheat. & I bet it could safeguard many other Graphics Cards types as well. The Case has room for improvement in it's design, but it's spiffy enough.

This is the kinda Ventilation puder users should be aiming for if they want their Graphics Cards to stay healthy, instead of going boom.

Modifié par Tyrax Lightning, 26 février 2010 - 05:12 .

[Gorath Alpha]

IMO, cleanliness comes first. It is literally astounding how fast the lint and dust can clog things up in various situations. PCs on the floor are the worst, although with even one furred house pet, including "non-shedding" breeds, its dander can contribute enough detritus to clog a system high above the floor in a short period.

[joey_mork84]

I keep my pc on my desk for that very reason. We have carpeted floors and it wouldn't take long for it to clog it all up. I still do regular cleanings about once a week with a can of compressed air and a rag. I had my old pc on the floor and found out first hand how bad of an idea that can be. Even my weekly cleaning wasn't enough to help that.

[Gorath Alpha]

The thing I do that probably contributes the most to collecting dust is that I leave a system running 24 / 7 most times, and even though it's off the floor, and in fact a good distance back from the edge of its table, the filters fill up rapidly (CM Elite case, with a perforated bezel, behind which I spread a "Swiffer" type of paper fiber product, which works very well as a filter).

[joey_mork84]

I never thought about trying a filter system like that and I have a Swiffer lol.. And I have mine set up the same way, on the desk as far back as I can put it. My big problem, though, is I'm a smoker. That's why I pay so close attention to how clean it is. I know cig smoke will ruin parts if it's not kept clean enough. I'm gonna try that filter idea, though. I've got a lot of vents on my case, but I'll try it with one of them first and see how well it works. Thanks for the input, Gorath!

[Gorath Alpha]

joey_mork84 wrote...

I never thought about trying a filter system like that and I have a Swiffer lol.. And I have mine set up the same way, on the desk as far back as I can put it. My big problem, though, is I'm a smoker. That's why I pay so close attention to how clean it is. I know cig smoke will ruin parts if it's not kept clean enough. I'm gonna try that filter idea, though. I've got a lot of vents on my case, but I'll try it with one of them first and see how well it works. Thanks for the input, Gorath!

Well, I also used to smoke a lot, but I began to really dislike the smell of day-old cigaret smoke in my car and my house, and went through a very rough patch in between jobs when unemployment funding had a time limit, and ran out.  I had been smoking for 30+ years with three breaks of about a year and a half each when my wife was pregnant and the children tiny, and there just wasn't enough of a budget to support a bad habit like that. 

Meanwhile, if you don't use "Swiffer-type" fabric now, but do use softener sheets in the clothes drier, those make very good PC filters as well. 

Gorath
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