heat problem, or video divers/support?

[hallam2003]

well, i just got done building a new computer for a friend of mine. he's been running it for about a week now, but has big trouble when he uses the 3d card in any way. a few specs - • AMD 1.2 GHz Athlon “T-Bird” Processor, 266MHz FSB
• MSI K7T266 Motherboard, 1xAGP/5xPCI/1xCNR/3xDDR W/Audio
• 30.6 GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• 12X DVD/40X CD-ROM Drive
• 1.44MB Floppy Drive
• 64MB DDR GeForce 2 PRO Video Card
• 256MB DDR PC2100 Crucial RAM
• 56K V.90 Modem
• 10BT/100BTX Fast Ethernet Card

ok, now that is out of the way, he is my problem. After running any 3d game for more than about 10 minutes, the video freezes and the computer must be restarted. my first thought was the since i used a crappy case, that it was getting too hot. I had him check the temps throught the motherboard sensors, and i think I'm right. the CPU was around 45C average at pretty full load, which isn't that bad, but the ambient was about 40-43C, and that is terrible to me. anyway, I had him open the side of the case and he said the temps were down to around the 30-35 range, but it still locked up during gaming. I told him I'd put a 92MM in the top to get the hot ari out, but if it's not going to help, then why do it. anyway, i go to think that it might just be some bad drivers or something that needed updated, so what do you guys think i should try first? I'm going to put a big floor fan in the side to get it colled off quick, then see if it's still freezing bad, then I'm gonna try top update some drivers first, then i think i'm out of ideas, the one extra fan woun't do much if having the side off doens't.

[rowan]

What are the temps of the GPU? Is the fan on the GPU working?

Some of the better graphics cards come bundled with probe software (like Asus and MSI). Perhaps you could use this to determine if your GPU is running too hot.

Temp might not be your problem, however, and changing drivers after you've determined that the GPU fan is working and the temp is ok might not be a bad idea.

r.

[hallam2003]

I only got to play with this system for about 1 1/2 days, and haven't seen it since, so I really can't rememebr if the GPU has a temp probe on it. The vid card is an MSI, I've never had a problem with anything from MSI, which is why i bought it, as well as it's was the cheapest. I don't recall seeing a GPU temp probe, I'm sure i would have if it was there, i pretty well looked over everything on it. I rigged up a pretty ghetto fan thing for some internal cooling. I took a pop-out slot cover that i had let over, drilled some holes, attached a fan to it and screwed it onto on the slots, so the fan in blowing onto the CPU, and over the vid card, depending on you needs, you can move the fan up a slot, or down a slot or whatever to get the air where you need it, or reverse the fan, to get the air moving around in there, and away from whatever you place it by.anyway. I'll give this thinginy to him to use. I'm really pretty sure that it's just too darn hot for it. The video card only had a heatsink/fan over the GPU, and it didn;t cover the RAM, so i think it's very easy for this to overheat, but I'm still not sure. He;s taking it into his own hands to remove Win2K and install win98 for whatever reason, probably cause i mentioned that win2k MAY take down some of his graphical performance, anyway, he seams to think that this will work, but I'm sceptical, maily because I'm sure he'll install win98, and updare the drivers at the same time, and it'll work just fine then, and I'll be the dumb computer guy that said it wouldn;t matter much. I'll ask around my friends to see if anyone has an external temp probe, so maybe we can get a guestimate reading on the GPU temp, even though it wouldn't really be exact by any means. if it wasn't for the case temp being so darn high(~45C) I woun't have even thought about heat being a problem. but, I'm almost sure that this is the problem, I'll rig up that fan in there, and see if that cools things down any more.

Hallam

[hallam2003]

yes, as far as i remember the fan was spinngin just fine when i built it, I assume it still is, but I'll ask just to make sure.

Hallam