So easy to fry a GPU?

[Marshall]

After having my kinda old FX 5900 gpu (graphics processing unit, or graphics card) irreversibly damaged while playing a popular and very resource intensive game, Oblivion, I just felt like bringing this up and that its probably necessary to use an air blower or w/e and clean the insides of your computer thoroughly every few months, and provide proper cooling to it.

That said, I have my reasons to suspect that some of the latest games can infact over stress and over heat your computer's gpu/video card and cause damage to it, without warning. For whatever reason. I found this big thread at Oblivion's website about the OP hinting what I too have come to suspect, for those concerned.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=315817

I'm not sure about what really happened. It's strange and hence the purpose of this post. It has proper cooling and air flow through the computer and I did have temperature monitors running that could have alerted me. There are many brands of water/thermal cooling devices, big heatsinks and fans, what I looked at as geekery. But it's a damn shame because I bought this gpu just over a couple years ago and it was expensive and top of the line.

It ran all the latest games properly, until it died, though it was getting too old (over 2 years old) and a few latest games like ghost recon AW didn't even run on it. My new GPU, a 6800, performs much better, but I would still rather that this had not happened, or gets repeated. More so when I make an investment again when DX 10 games come out.

[Naubi]

I just got a 6800 recently, it seems fine so far even with the hot weather.

[Shikarii]

i graduated to a new case finally...it's actually a nice looking box too methinks (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1178032&CatId=1848)...but it was more of a venting concern now that my new video card has the ability to measure temperature and i saw the numbers were climbing...plus i went to a bigger power supply as well which some of you may laugh at ( yeah, it's way overkill but will be part of Part 2 of my new machine by end of year (http://www.xoxide.com/sintek-600-sli-power-supply.html) )

sucks you lost yours though..it took me 5 years to finally open the wallet for a new card.

[Vikken]

Wow, that is a nice PSU. I'm such a gfeek for drooling at that.

Heat problems? Yeah, you should have tried running the GF4600 and 2 AMD 1800 MP. I had 7 fans in this box and still couldn't keep stable temps at a comfortable room temperature. GF lasted about a year before it went poof. Had a proc go bad after about 8 months.

It just makes me pissy that they release these heat machines for general use. These things shold be stable in 80 degree room temp with mild fans. I'm definitely gonna be paying more attention to how much fan my procs and GPU need when I build my next machine.

[Vikken]

OH, and oblivion destroys my setup. I had to reapply my CPU paste just to get a stable run on it. I've got aftermarket coolers on the procs too.

[Baadan]

I had to turn down my overclocks when it started getting hot during the summer. Ambient indoor temps of about 80 degrees makes things difficult. Hooray for Texas!

[Shirion]

The humidity in Michigan is horrible for computers. I keep box-fans running on my computers at all times.

[Marshall]

That PSU looks neat, grats Shik. However imo it's overclocking features should not be used, instead overclock from the computer BIOS settings, if need be.

So now that my 5900 is only good to watch/edit movies or ms office work, only 2D stuff no Direct3D, I went ahead and flashed its BIOS with a 5950u bios as an experiment (read about it on various sites and always wanted to do it), making it a 5950u minus 128 mb of ram. It works and its ambient temperatures dropped significantly for some reason. Still no 3D though. So I put it back in its box, along with its original bios on a floppy, and put it away.

As for temperature limits, I'm not gona follow the general thumb rule to keep it under 70-80 celcius. I think 60-63 celcius is a good upper limit and anything above that warrants an improvement to the cooling system. It gives it longevity imo.

Windows Vista is going to have a permanently 3D desktop. That will keep your system heated/stressed at all times. DX 10 (and hence the dx10 games) will be Vista only. Older GPU's will most probably not be dx10 compliant. They should redesign cooling systems for the heat it will produce. So I'll make an upgrade when all that happens and the dust settles.

And yes the 6800 is sweet. It has much lower operating temperatures and when i looked at pixel shader 3.0 effects i forgot about the loss. My mobo is old and has an AGP interface for GPU. I didn't feel like upgrading the whole thing just yet. I've bought a table fan and removed a side cover of the casing, I think that provides good, low noise air flow through the casing. Don't play Oblivion without it. :)

[Shikarii]

and i thought i was pushing it keeping the video card under 42 degrees C ..

Mostly the case and PSU I got were someone elses hand-me-downs and once I got my 6600 GT about 6 months ago and I knew my old PSU was going to be close to extinction.
The future of my plans holds a decent-sized RAID system and a couple of video cards and is going to need some beefy power...I honestly didn't think of overlocking by the PSU though; it was mostly the biggest bang for the buck.

[Eriatha Egan]

If I'm not mistaken, the FX 5xxx series of Nvidia cards are naturally hot runners, but all video cards are to an extent - usually warmer than CPUs. My 6800GT at idle is currently operating at 65C, and it never wavers or faulters despite the extreme temperate. It even has an 80mm fan blowing on it from the side.

[Yoda]

If I'm not mistaken, the FX 5xxx series of Nvidia cards are naturally hot runners, but all video cards are to an extent - usually warmer than CPUs. [...]none of my CPU ever went under 57°C, most of the time they are around 64°C... and I never known how to check GPU temperature.
but well you can't cool down your PU so well when outer temperature is already above 30°C...

[Vikken]

and i thought i was pushing it keeping the video card under 42 degrees C ..

Mostly the case and PSU I got were someone elses hand-me-downs and once I got my 6600 GT about 6 months ago and I knew my old PSU was going to be close to extinction.
The future of my plans holds a decent-sized RAID system and a couple of video cards and is going to need some beefy power...I honestly didn't think of overlocking by the PSU though; it was mostly the biggest bang for the buck.

I use an Antec and it was fairly cheap too. Also very quiet. I've been through a couple of PSUs and I haven't a single issue with this one. So, if you're in the market for one, I'd check out an Antec.

[Raaj]

I have a 9800 pro that after playing oblivion no longer works proprerly. I'm not saying oblivion did it, but I didn't see any problems until afterwards when I was playing EQ.