Hi Guys,

My power supply recently died after about 18 months of use, so I upgraded from 350W to a 500W unit. Since a couple of weeks after installing the new PSU my machine has been getting hella hot, and performing poorly as a result. Now, my new PSU fan blows downwards, as opposed to straight out the back of the base unit like my old one. However the fan is really bloody big and not generating much heat iself, so I'm surprised if this is causing the whole issue.

From feeling around, the hot areas seem to be the socket in the back of the PSU where I plug in the kettle cable, and the GFX card. Checked the temps too and indeed the graphics card is burning up somewhat.

So it looks like the graphics card is definitely the problem, but I don't see why my new PSU would be causing this. Any ideas?

Details below:

CPU Type QuadCore Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2400 MHz (9 x 267)
Motherboard Name Asus P5N-E SLI (2 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce 650i SLI
System Memory 4Gb
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (768 MB)


Motherboard 49 °C (120 °F)
CPU 49 °C (120 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #1 52 °C (126 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 50 °C (122 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #3 48 °C (118 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #4 47 °C (117 °F)
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GPU 73 °C (163 °F) These are temps after 5 minutes of gaming, all are around 50-60°C not gaming
GPU Diode 83 °C (181 °F)
GPU Memory 73 °C (163 °F)
GPU Ambient 63 °C (145 °F)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cooling Fans
CPU 1805 RPM
Chassis 1607 RPM
Chassis #2 2177 RPM
GPU 1596 RPM (60%)


Many thanks for any advice

p.

must of distupted the airflow or got some dust clogged up into the GPU cooler causing it to over heat. what temp is it reaching whilst gaming?

Burning up?? Those temps look normal for a GPU. graphics cards generally run hotter than CPUs (oftin in the 60-80C range). Nothing looks exceptionally hot; the cpu is a little warm for a core series but it's far from dangerous and is about where it would be with a stock cooler when under load.

You fail to mention your power supply?
Those temperatures are not hot, in fact, i'm surprised you had your 8800gtx significantly lower than that.

Now this wouldn't cause any serious heat issues, but power supplies get less efficient the less power (in percentage) that you use, so the 350, being the weaker power supply (a 8800gtx on a 350!), is probably outputting near 100%, yeilding highest efficiency. Now the 500w is probably not utilizing quite so much, so it wastes some energy as heat.

Ok. You broke a fundamental rule by cross/double posting. I'm not going to get too upset with you because I didn't notice it until now. But don't do it anymore. I responded to your post when you hijacked another thread to prevent further wasted effort I'm not going to make you or anyone else chase down what I said, the link is just there for reference/proof. Here is what I posted.

As you can see, my first segment was based on the thread title of the thread you hijacked. Confusion like that occurs easily, as you can see this leads to information that yields a big 'wtf?'. So please do not do it in the future.

Many thanks for the replies so far, guys. Also, my apologies for the double post, n00b error on my part!

I should have mentioned this originally I suppose - whilst gaming I'm getting temps over 70C after about 2-3 minutes, and that's with the GPU fan operating at 100%. I'll also see if I can clean out the GPU cooler.

Yeah, my friend who helped me install the new PSU was amazed that my machine was shipped with a 350W supply originally. The 500W unit outputting unused energy as heat does make sense, I should look into airflow and additional cooling with regards to this.

Edit - I've thought a bit more about this - could it be that because I'm now using a 500W PSU rather than the 350W, the GPU is sucking up all the extra juice, i.e. more than it needs, and is overheating? The reason I'm thinking this is because, say you have a 50W guitar amp and replace it with a 100W amplifier - the speakers will blow and your amp will be no more.....

Chances are unlikely, and I have never heard of that happening, but i suppose it COULD happen, but that would be very bad for your card, if that is the case, and your graphics card is siphoning off all the power, I would have thought it would blow up by now...

Now with 100% fan speed, 70 is strangely high, it would all be normal if the fan speed were down. What power supply are you using now, and if you know by heart, what amazing 350w power supply was juicing your system before?

No, your PSU isn't feeding too much power to the GPU. Your analogy to an amp is forgetting that even with a larger amp you won't blow the speakers unless you try, ie turn it up. There is no way to turn up the output you feed to the card from the PSU, the card 'pulls' what it needs from the PSU. It won't pull more than it is supposed to unless there is a defect in the card.

GPU temps in the 70s are fine, CPU temps that high are a bit concerning, I'm still unclear on what is getting to what temperatures.

What exactly do you mean by performing poorly anyway? Perhaps the CPU throttling threshold is set too low (set in the bios), but I don't know for sure what it is exactly that is underperforming.

With 100% fan speed? Is this just something with the 8800gtx that I don't know about?

The current 500W PSU is a JeanTech Orchid
The old 350W is a ISO-450pp

I've edited my original post to give a better idea of the temperatures I'm getting. Also, I can conclude that airflow is definitely NOT the problem - did lots of testing last night with the case open and closed, found no difference. Cleaned out all the dust too, with no difference.

Interestingly, the area on the GPU near the fan is nice and cool, however the opposite end is roasting hot.

As per performing poorly, games which normally run smoothly get jittery after playing for a while, and I've experienced major graphical tearing.

Well that sounds like it is overheating then, but the temperatures are fine. So that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

There is a program to crank up the fan speed on your graphics card, I think it is called Riva Tuner. You may want to try that, run it up at 100% and see if that helps.

If it doesn't, update your graphics drivers, probably doesn't hurt to do that now anyway. If its still messed up after that I think your card is broke (or its heatsink isn't seated properly anymore).

That is probably artifacting from the heat...not that I have any clue about the issue anymore.

Eh hem...

But yes, go ahead and update your drivers, no harm.

I thought maybe I had seen something about fan speed earlier in the thread but it the problem doesn't make sense. It does sound heat related, but like we've all said, a GPU temp in the 70s is completely normal, and there should be absolutely no heat problems for at least another 20C.

Temps seem fine. If you're worried try updating drivers. It can sometimes shave off a few degrees.