My 6800GT card just arrived yesterday. It's installed and working great, but I have a couple of questions:

1) The core temperature's running at 65 degrees C in normal Windows operation, and it can jump up close to 100 when playing games. How bad is this for the card? The nVidia drivers have the shutdown temp set at 137; am I good as long I stay beneath this?

2) It's very loud. I read some reviews that said it should be very quiet, so I took the card back out and blew some compressed air through the fan. When the card's out of the case, the fan is incredibly quiet. When I put it back in, the noise was back. At the moment, my best guess is that the air flow from the fan is causing some loose cables to rattle against the side of the case, so I'm planning on picking up some zip ties today to try to take care of that. Does anyone else have any suggestions for quieting it down, or an alternate theory?

10/19/2005 10:13:12 AM

This card gets really hot. Your temperatures aren't out of the ordinary. Keeping the ambient temperature down will help some. As for the noise, mine isn't that loud. Is the noise you're getting from things rattling around inside the case or is it just the spinning of the fan? You can get acoustic linings for cases that might help.

[Edited on October 19, 2005 at 12:07 PM. Reason : ]

10/19/2005 12:06:48 PM

I don't think it's directly from the fan--when I blew the compressed air in, it spun freely and the only noise was a typical high-pitched fan whine. When it's in the case, though, there's a crazy buzzing noise.

It's not the fan directly hitting something, because the Leadtek fan has a mesh over the blades so nothing can come in direct contact with them. So like I said, my best guess is that the turbulent airflow is causing some cables in the case to vibrate against the sides...I don't really know, though. When I get some free time, I'm going to boot it up with the case open and see just what's going on.

I thought about putting some damping material on the inside of the case, but I feel like it just shouldn't be this loud so I want to address the source of the problem.

Hopefully moving/tying the cables will also assist the airflow--the ambient temperature seems to hit its lowest point at around 50 degrees. This PC was incredibly quiet (until I added this card yesterday), so maybe the case fans are weak--speaking of that, I should check and see if I can increase the speed of those...

10/19/2005 12:24:56 PM

Something in the case may not be secured all the way and that could cause vibration.

10/19/2005 1:07:59 PM

it is supposed to be pretty quiet.

Maybe your case isn't cooled properly forcing the fans to run full speed.

10/19/2005 1:23:05 PM

The case probably isn't cooled enough, but I don't think that explains the noise.

However, on that note, does anyone have recommendations for particular slot coolers?

10/19/2005 1:31:37 PM

oh trust me

I had the same video card...only the non GT version...so yea bad comparison...but my computer crashed once, and the fans turned up so high that the entire desk was shaking.

10/19/2005 1:33:12 PM

^^ Slot coolers aren't worth a damn. Get some 120mm case fans.

10/19/2005 1:57:57 PM

65C for idle or normal shit ain't too bad....i think thats about the norm.

100C is getting close to that 115C critical GPU temp. though, you probably don't have good air flow in your case like everyone said.

I bought an 90mm fan, adding to a total of 6 fans in my case, not including the video card fan, and my idle/normal temp is about 46C for my bfg 7800 gt oc

10/19/2005 3:15:08 PM

who cares about temps. OC the hell outta that thing...

10/19/2005 3:18:17 PM

Well, I added a slot cooler (sorry, didn't have time to check the thread in the meantime). Idle temp has dropped to 58.

Still buzzing, and I'll be damned if I can figure out why.

10/19/2005 3:55:31 PM

Well, if anyone's even reading this, I'm prety sure I've found the problem.

The mesh that overlays the fan on the card has popped inward--the fan's hitting it when it spins.

10/19/2005 4:30:10 PM

I've had that happen with my SATA cables. I had a friend get his SATA cable snached out of the drive mid write. That was fun.

10/19/2005 8:44:01 PM

zalman vga cooler keeps my 6600GT at <60'C under full load, 42'C under normal windows operation

10/19/2005 11:23:53 PM

dang, well either my case sucks or the fan/heatsink i got sucks. i got a 6800gt and it was so hot i installed an extreme giant 3. reviews said it was great. but fans loud as a dustbuster and the cards temp stays around 62 then luckily only 70 under load.

10/20/2005 2:45:58 AM

Well, turns out I was wrong. There's no easy fix for the noise.

At this point it seems like the fan is wobbling (probably unbalanced). So I guess I'll be RMAing it.

10/20/2005 9:23:11 AM

my targus tornado laptop cooling pad keeps my shit at like 40c tops

10/20/2005 5:14:45 PM