Core 2 plus 2 x Nvidia Geforce 8600 driving 2 monitors both as SLI
(gaming/XP) and otherwise (work/Gentoo).
I have a fairly good quality full tower case with two input fans sucking
in air across two drive arrays and extract with the main system fan. The
trouble was that airflow wasn't really effective (a dead spot) over the
GPU heatsinks. With latest Nvidia drivers packaging PhysX I started
exhibiting heat issues in GPUs and nearby disk controller. I added a
cheap free floating fan that just sits vertically on the floor of the
case pointing across the GPU heatsinks towards some unused PCI slots I'd
uncovered. Will fix the fan in place when I get a chance :-) Fan was a
$10 120mm fan that could piggyback into the power feed for the disks.
Cards went from around 70-90 degrees underload down to around a more
acceptable 45-50 and problems disappeared.
You could also disable PhysX if it's available as an option. If the
system fan in your box isin't populated then heat is a strong suspect. A
lot of off-the-shelf systems run just inside the margins to save cost.
Quick confirmation of heat issues before spending money - point a
deskfan or hairdryer (on cold) into affected areas in your open case and
monitor temperature differences with Speedfan or Gkrellm under load.
Aidan Gauland wrote:
That sounds like my situation (the bit about passive cooling). I'll
try that. Did you fix the fan in place, or just let it dangle?
There's a place in my box for a "system fan", but there's not one
there, so I'll get one. Also, could you tell me a little bit more
about your graphics hardware?
Thanks,
Aidan
Euan Clark wrote:
I've noticed increased heat issues on both my GPUs on both XP &
Gentoo - I think latest nvidia drivers push the cards harder
(PhysX?) - they were passive cooling only so I dropped another fan
in the box pointed across the cards and the issues have gone.
