Hi guys,
I recently downloaded the CPUID HWMonitor software to see how hot my CPU and GPU get during idle and use, and discovered that during a game of team fortress 2 my graphics card was getting up to 74 degrees C.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to cool it better? Pereferably nothing too noisy either as enough gets generated by my case.

Make sure you have adequate air moving through the case.

I'm using the antec 900 case, it has two 60mm fans and a 200mm fan blowing air in with an additional 60mm fan blowing air out. Is that enough?

my graphics card is the GeForce 8800 GTS made by EVGA if that's any help?

download evga precision to check the fan speeds on the card.

ok well the card's currently idling at 55 degrees with the fan at 60% according to this

You need to determine whether it's your video card that's making it too hot or if it's the cases airflow being detrimental to your computer system.

I use HWMonitor also. You can learn a few good things if you pay attention to the temps of all your internal equipment. If the cases airflow is what's causing you problems, you'll see that your cpu and hdd temps are too high also. If only your video card is too high, then you'll know that it's the main source for your heat problems.

And another thing to note is your room temperature. A hot room is bad for computers.

Anyway, I had a 6600gt, and it idled at 60+ with the standard hsf it came with and gamed in the 80+ temps. It was horrid, lots of video lag and artifacts. I ordered an all copper aftermarket hsf and the temps dropped remarkably. That could do the trick for you. But, after a year, my card just failed. So, If it's not your case airflow causing the problems, and if an aftermarket heatsink doesn't fix the heating issues, the card might just be defective.

Often, it's the memory on the video card getting too hot and not the gpu itself. Unfortunately, I don't know of any program that tells the temps of a video cards memory. But guaranteed, if the memory doesn't have any heatsinks on it, you can always do better by adding them, imho.

No as far as I've noticed it's only the graphics card that gets too hot, everything else stays at 40 or below.

Room temperature isn't hot either, I live in the UK and room temp very rarely will go above 20.

Any suggestions for heatsinks? also how do you go about installing them on the card?

Have you tried removing any dust/ other detritus from the card and applying new Thermal Gel to the GPU?

If you want to go really crazy you could try water cooling the card, but that's expensive.

http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=276

I haven't, anything I should be aware of before attempting to remove dust? And what do you mean by new thermal gel?

Wear an ESD (electro static dishcharge) wrist strap/bracelet so you dont fry your card, they can be bought for £5-10. an essential item for any computer entheusiast or person who does ocasional work on their computer.

Thermal compound (sorry if thats the name you know it by) is what is used to help transfer heat from the device it is applied to to the cooling device, e.g. heatsink. You should be able to see a video on how to apply it on youtube or a tech supplier/support site.

Dust creates an insulating layer around electronics, this causes the electronics to heat more than if they were dust free. Might be time give your whole system a clean and see if that helps. Also make sure to place wires/cables in a position so that they don't restrict air flow.

A thought's just occured to me, could me running a second monitor be causing this problem? I'm using the TV beside my computer as a secondary monitor when not running the xbox, possible cause of the heating?

Yes that would put extra strain on the card, causing it work harder and thus becoming hotter. Although I imagine that your card should be able to handle it.

Try running the running your computer with just the one monitor and see if that makes it any cooler, then using the extra monitor only when it is needed.

I would still suggest giving the graphics card a good dust down as graphics cards are notorious for sucking s**$ in like a hungry hippo, you would be suprised at the amount of dust even in a seemingly dust free environment.

This will probably make no differece but are you using the latest drivers for your card?

I use an old toothbrush to remove dust from my computer parts, the bristles work great in cleaning cpu heatsinks, plus the light brushing over the cards gets the collected dust off quite nicely. But I don't believe dust is what's causing such a high temp for your gpu.

You could certainly take off and re-apply the heatsink fan as mrturtle suggests. It's not difficult. And if that doesn't work, you can then go out and get you an aftermarket one. I don't have any suggestions on which one to get though. You'll just have to find reviews for people who've used the hsf's and trust them.
Here's one that I found for that card though I can't tell you how good it is from experience. I do see that it comes with 8 memory heatsinks also. And I believe that's your main problem for the card you have. It's pretty low priced too:
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556081043.html

HI Alaric,
all good suggestions,but keep in mind that 74c is not terribly hot for your card. review temps for that card go from 54c for the dual slot cooler to 90c for the single slot.

As above.. i dont think thats really too hot for that card. Not under load anyway. Idle may be a little high.

GPU's are supposed to run quite high when under strain in my memory

As for the dust problem, sometimes removing that can drop temperature down 5 degrees!

We use a dive air tank which works quite well. You can buy cans of compressed air however.

Wouldn't suggest a vacuum cleaner as some people do >.<

Even I have the same problem. Is there any fan that I purchase?

something like the Antec V-cool will drop temps up to 15c if you have an open PCI slot below your card