Can't cool my 6800GT

M

Menelmarar

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Feb 15, 2001
Messages
5,472
Recently picked up a used BFG 6800GT of these to boost my fps and its my first return to nVidia in 3 years, been running on a 9700PRO. The nVidia control panel reports 73C at idle, and in some games it will rise over the 120C limit and pop up the warning box that says it reduced GPU speed to protect itself. Even my 2.4GHz northwood idles quite warm(for a northwood anyway) at 44C and chassis ambient is around 36C.

Doom3 and Farcry did this after a while of playing

Have an Enermax full tower chassis, 2x80mm front intake, 2x80mm side intake, 2x80mm rear exhaust, Eneramx 431W with dual fans, and 1x80mm top exhaust. One other possible issue is that the front 2 intake fans have 5x7200rpm harddrives in the airflow path.

Link to a review of my chassis (it doesn't show any of my cables, but I have no digicam so best I can do): http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1626662,00.asp

I replaced the stock cooler with an NV Silencer 5 using Artic Silver 5 paste on the core, but it didn't alter my temps hardly at all.

Rivatuner Thumbnail of a quick Doom3 session where I go many many threshold warning popups:
 
Menelmarar said:
Recently picked up a used BFG 6800GT of these to boost my fps and its my first return to nVidia in 3 years, been running on a 9700PRO. The nVidia control panel reports 73C at idle, and in some games it will rise over the 120C limit and pop up the warning box that says it reduced GPU speed to protect itself. Even my 2.4GHz northwood idles quite warm(for a northwood anyway) at 44C and chassis ambient is around 36C.

Doom3 and Farcry did this after a while of playing

Have an Enermax full tower chassis, 2x80mm front intake, 2x80mm side intake, 2x80mm rear exhaust, Eneramx 431W with dual fans, and 1x80mm top exhaust. One other possible issue is that the front 2 intake fans have 5x7200rpm harddrives in the airflow path.

Link to a review of my chassis (it doesn't show any of my cables, but I have no digicam so best I can do): http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1626662,00.asp

I replaced the stock cooler with an NV Silencer 5 using Artic Silver 5 paste on the core, but it didn't alter my temps hardly at all.

Rivatuner Thumbnail of a quick Doom3 session where I go many many threshold warning popups:
Click to expand...

Something is definitely wrong. My BFG Geforce 6800GT idles between 58 - 60C. Are you sure your fans on the video card are working???
 
swy81 said:
Something is definitely wrong. My BFG Geforce 6800GT idles between 58 - 60C. Are you sure your fans on the video card are working???
Click to expand...

Yes its clearly spinning and pushing air.

I have a 52' ceiling fan in my room circling air as well as the thermostat set to 74F. which is quite a comfortable temp :(

Can't figure this shit out :(
 
that's NUTS. specially using an NV silencer.

have you made sure the heatsink is actually making contact well?
 
qbackin said:
Yeah wow. What is your case cooling situation? Side fan?

80mm Pci fan card might help.
Click to expand...
read my chassis description again plz.
 
botld92z said:
that's NUTS. specially using an NV silencer.

have you made sure the heatsink is actually making contact well?
Click to expand...
yes, once I realized temps were bad, I disassembled it again and the Artic Silver spread out on both the GPU and Heatsink surface quite well.
 
Which cooler does you BFG have? I know one of their non reference coolers ran notoriously high. Though my 6800GT had a pretty high core temp as well. I bought one of those solid copper heatsinks that evga offers for it and used AS5 and it lowered my temps about 17c. PS I'll probably get flamed for this but I've always thought Arctic Silencer products were poor at cooling compared to other solutions. They're meant to be quiet first and foremost.
 
definately contact problems. it happened with my x800xtpe. GPUs are well built though. Mine ran like that for like 3 weeks before i replaced the cooler, no problems
 
Try reapplying a thin layer of AS5 to the GPU and then see what the temperatures are. If they are still that high, put the original heatsink back on and start the RMA process.

When you get the repalcement card, purchase a Zalman VF-700cu and stick that on it.
 
A friend's 6800GT was overheatting really bad, it was the heatsink not having enough airflow because of dust accumulation, the fan looked clean, but under the heatsink cover (where the albatron logo is painted) there was a lot of dust, so a tiny screwdriver is required to remove it and clean that area.....

good luck

oldmx
 
Put a STASIS IceStorm on that puppy and your temp graphs will look closer to this:

attachment.php
 
If there's something wrong with the actual card, you just voided your lifetime warranty by removing the stock heatsink... I had a similar issue where my BFG 6600GT was artifacting and overheating. Luckily I was able to pull a "switcharoo" at my local BB and get a working card.

Here's my old thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=932220

And here's my email w/ BFG Tech Support:
Mark@BFG said:
Dave,

Don't do it. If the card is in-fact defective, call us to RMA it. If you physically manipulate the card, it will no longer be under warranty.

Mark @ BFG
Click to expand...
 
I had the same problem with a stock EVGA 6800 128mb.. I ended up RMA'ing it to newegg :(
When I called evga's tech support, it sounded like a common problem.. Guess thats why it was so cheap on newegg lol!
 
SilverMK3 said:
If there's something wrong with the actual card, you just voided your lifetime warranty by removing the stock heatsink... I had a similar issue where my BFG 6600GT was artifacting and overheating. Luckily I was able to pull a "switcharoo" at my local BB and get a working card.

Here's my old thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=932220

And here's my email w/ BFG Tech Support:
Click to expand...
First line of my post says I bought it used. The guy I got it from parted out his entire computer and went mobile. BFG warranty does not transfer iirc. So I think its my problem now. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Its interesting, I played WoW for several hours yesterday and the temps never exceeded 98C, which didn't cause the threshold warning interrupting my gameplay. That is still blistering hot, but acceptible since it is within the GPU thermal spec...?

I just bought a $30 heatsink/fan ....I'm not really happy about the idea of buying yet another to fix the problem.
 
Menelmarar said:
First line of my post says I bought it used. The guy I got it from parted out his entire computer and went mobile. BFG warranty does not transfer iirc. So I think its my problem now. I'm not sure what to do at this point. Its interesting, I played WoW for several hours yesterday and the temps never exceeded 98C, which didn't cause the threshold warning interrupting my gameplay. That is still blistering hot, but acceptible since it is within the GPU thermal spec...?

I just bought a $30 heatsink/fan ....I'm not really happy about the idea of buying yet another to fix the problem.
Click to expand...

Dude, it doesn't matter if you bought the video card from someone in Africa. If your card is defective, BFG will replace it. Go and get that RMA process started.
 
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