How hot is too hot for a video card

jerryk · Post by **jerryk** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 11:32 pm

Hi,

I got one of those temp monitors for my system. It had 2 sensors so I hooked one to the CPU and one to the heatsink on my Nvidia GEForce 4 MX 440 card. The CPU monitor varies all over the place depending on load. This makes sense. But the video card is pretty steady and warm It reads 125 to 135 F (42-50C) most of the time. Is this too high?

If so, I have a Zalman XM50-HF heat sink I could install. That is a could install it if someone would tell me how to remove the old heat sink. That thing is superglued onto the video card.

jerry

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 3:45 am

Well I can tell you about my card ...AIW Radeon7500. It has no fan, only a short heatsink. A probe in the heat sink yielded temps about 37/39C. With a slot fan under it, the temps are about 35/36C.

Rather than risk damaging the card, I'd suggest directing some air-flow over over it, either by a small fan, or some sort of duct. I'm not certain what sort of video card temps would be considered too high...

blakerwry · Post by **blakerwry** » Thu Mar 20, 2003 11:42 pm

I think a gfx chip can usually run at the same temp as a CPU... I have fried a fanless TNT2 M64 before... months at very high temps (>60C) caused the screen to go blurry... But I'd say that under 50C should be fine. You might be able to give it longer life if you keep it cooler though.

Post by **MikeC** » Fri Mar 21, 2003 12:24 am

If it aint broke, don't fix it. If the performance is good, why do anything? You don;t expect that card to serve you more than a couple of years and it wll probably survive 10. I have a 6 year old fanless Matrox G200 in a very hot PC that keeps going without a hitch.

Old Dude · Post by **Old Dude** » Sat Apr 05, 2003 6:24 am

jerryk wrote:Hi,

I got one of those temp monitors for my system. It had 2 sensors so I hooked one to the CPU and one to the heatsink on my Nvidia GEForce 4 MX 440 card. The CPU monitor varies all over the place depending on load. This makes sense. But the video card is pretty steady and warm It reads 125 to 135 F (42-50C) most of the time. Is this too high?

jerry

I don't know but I think that the heatsink is not the best place to measure your video card on. I have my sensor on the opposite side of the card at the place of the core. It shows much higher temps.

Now my GeForce4 shows 55C and with a poorer case cooling it was well over 60C.

How hot is too hot for a video card

How hot is too hot for a video card

Re: How hot is too hot for a video card