GTX 295 Cooling

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sdkoskey

Weaksauce
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Mar 10, 2007
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I have a an Antec P180 Micro with a GTX295. I loaded up Crysis 2. I can play the game for about an hour before the system locks up because the video card overheats. I'm looking for a good solution to keep the 295 cooler.

Any good ideas besides water cooling?
 
stock or overclocked?

Mine runs pretty warm too so anytime I do anything 3D intensive (any gaming), overclocked or not, I'll crank up the fan speed manually in evga precision. If you don't mind the noise, it works pretty well. With the fan @ 100%, it rarely goes above 60-65 degrees.

Also, have you tried cleaning it with compressed air? I had a TON of dust caked in the heat-sync. A few mins with a can of air and it dropped my idle temps by around 10 degrees.
 
dr.stevil said:
stock or overclocked?

Mine runs pretty warm too so anytime I do anything 3D intensive (any gaming), overclocked or not, I'll crank up the fan speed manually in evga precision. If you don't mind the noise, it works pretty well. With the fan @ 100%, it rarely goes above 60-65 degrees.

Also, have you tried cleaning it with compressed air? I had a TON of dust caked in the heat-sync. A few mins with a can of air and it dropped my idle temps by around 10 degrees.
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It's running stock. I don't get into overclocking too much. The first thing I did was take the entire computer out to the garage and blow it out with an air compressor. :D That got it VERY clean!

After playing the game for about 10 min., that fan is running at 100% all by itself. Gets pretty noisy but I don't mind it much. I just figure there's gotta be a good cooling solution out there that will help...
 
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Hmm, I have the same case and card and don't have overheating issues. Since you've already blown out the card, I'd put some thought into the upper front case fan on the P180. That's the one that should be blowing cool air in to the graphics card. I vacuum that screen about once per month as it clogs up with dust otherwise. You may want to put a stronger fan in that position so as to feed the card more cool air.
 
sdkoskey said:
yeah, that was the first thing I did. I took the entire computer out to the garage and blew it out with an air compressor. :D That got it VERY clean!

After playing the game for about 10 min., that fan is running at 100% all by itself. Gets pretty noisy but I don't mind it much. I just figure there's gotta be a good cooling solution out there that will help...
Click to expand...

Nvidia uses robust channels. The freezes is the robust channels allowing the system to recover when the gpu hangs. Nvidia have a miniport driver which logs all the gpu related entries. Go to the registry and search for RmLogonRc and set the entry to 1. It will log the crashes and report the reason eg thermal or not enough power etc
 
One of my 295 GTX was doing that, 5 minute in intensive games was all that was needed to crash. I could play less intensive games no problems but the temperature was quite high.

Disassembled the card and cleaned the heatsink. Put it back together and temperature went back to normal. (45 Celcius IDLE versus 65+ celcius and 76 ish celcius when running at 95% GPU usage VS 105C and crash.)

You probably have a carpet of dust blocking the airflow, air cans probably wont fix your problem. You will have to disassemble the card to clean it. It's an hassle but the result is well worth it.
 
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Cyant said:
One of my 295 GTX was doing that, 5 minute in intensive games was all that was needed to crash. I could play less intensive games no problems but the temperature was quite high.

Disassembled the card and cleaned the heatsink. Put it back together and temperature went back to normal. (45 Celcius IDLE versus 65+ celcius and 76 ish celcius when running at 95% GPU usage VS 105C and crash.)
Click to expand...

That's a good idea. I'll have to tear it completely apart. The compressor may not have gotten all the dust and dirt blown out from under the covers. Thanks.
 
sdkoskey said:
That's a good idea. I'll have to tear it completely apart. The compressor may not have gotten all the dust and dirt blown out from under the covers. Thanks.
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Yeah while you do that make sure you clean up and replace the thermal paste. And don't lose the screws! Theres a gazzilion of them remove the fan (and they are freaking small). Took me an hour and a half to open it up, clean everything and put it back together but temperatures dropped 25+ Celcius across the board. Now both my 295 have the same temperature.

I followed this guide, it could help you too. http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Feature/135751,gtx295-disassembly-guide.aspx

The part not covered in that guide is the removal of the squirel cage fan but its held in place by 3 screws youll see them once you get there. after that you will be able to clean the heatsink opening next to the fan.
 
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yeah it's not your case, something wrong with your GTX 295, take it apart and clean it good or get a gpu water block for it.
 
i always lock my 5970 at 100% fan when i'm doing serious gaming. . .you should do the same. . .or just keep letting your system crash for lack of caring until your card fries its vrms. . .
 
oldmanbal said:
or just keep letting your system crash for lack of caring until your card fries its vrms. . .
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Wow... you're not opinionated at all are you?

I DO care about my equipment. This is exactly why I created this thread. I've already completely disassembled the video card and cleaned it up. I also found that there was a severe lack of thermal paste on the GPUs. I added some Arctic Silver and reassembled. It's running a lot better now.

Thanks to all of you who provided constructive advise. I really appreciate it.
 
Nice to hear you got it worked out. Makes me wonder when I'll have to crack mine open and redo the thermal paste.
 
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