Overheating Passive 4850 1GB VGA

[parmany]

Hi Guys, just joined though been reading HEXUS for a while.

I snapped up from DABS the Gigabyte GV-R485MC-1GH which was cheaper than the 512mb version with fan. A bargain so I thought.

I installed it into old P4 case no with e8400 on P35 mothernoard and with a front small fan, a akasa AK-965 heatsink & fan over the CPU and a enermax 485W PSU with 2 fans. It's a stealth upgrade so my partner won't notice!

The setup seemed good at first with the 4850 idling at 75 to 81 deg C and the CPU being fine at stock speeds. I did have to take out the P4 wind tunnel over the old P4 CPU to accommodate the heatsink.

Loaded up Age of Conan and after a couple of days by secondary 17" TFT started to flash on and off. I thought I'd check the temperatures and loading of the 4850. I was rather surprised to see the ATI speedometer reaching 135 deg C !!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you think I should try for a slot cooler below or above the double slot 4850, or just Return the 4850 Card??? I did check the Gigabyte manual for installation and nowhere does it mention extra cooling. A lesson learnt I suppose on read a review before buying!

What are your thoughts??? Cheers!

[Webby]

With any high performance part that has a passive heatsink you need to ensure that you have decent case airflow and you don't.

Put simply you need a new case (but thats not going to be all that stealthy an upgrade) the only other alternative will be to get a fan and get it to move the air around the graphics card to help with heat transfer even a little air movement will help hugely, but really a new case is the way forward. Maybe get a stylish looking case and make up something about wanting to make the PC look nicer in the room...

[kalniel]

Passive cards are always hugely reliant on decent case airflow, especially if you're pushing them to the limits in games.

A cooler in the slot below is probably all you need, but you could also underclock/undervolt the card to keep the temps down a bit.

[staffsMike]

I don't know what it looks like but you could always strap a quiet fan to it, that normally does the trick

[Webby]

looks like this
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=2900

[shaithis]

You might need an exhaust fan, plus an internal fan, depending on your case.

If its cramped with very bad airflow, then you will probably need both, strategically placed for maximum effect.

Might be worth taking a photo or 2 of the innards and letting us see what you are working with.

[baius]

I've been looking at a "passive 4850 1GB", so exuse the "threaderuction".

I don't know what it looks like but you could always strap a quiet fan to it, that normally does the trick

That's really funny...

Might be worth taking a photo or 2 of the innards and letting us see what you are working with.

Can definitely agree with that. It's more helpful to us "visual learners" (ahem) if we can see what's "going on"...


In my particular case (no pun intended), my "case" has reasonably good airflow, but I'm still worried about the temperature of this "new" part. I've been looking at a gigabyte model on Scan.

I am quite "trusting" of the name, despite never having bought Gigabyte. The reviews I've read over the years are reasonably positive. The warranty is "24 months" according to Scan. I'd prefer EVGA' or BFG's "lifetime" warranty (10 years within EU), but couldn't see a corresponding product on Scan's pages within the same price range.

Don't really know what the point of this [strike]rant[/strike] post was. I suppose I'm trying to resurrect, in the hopes of getting more discussion and advice.

Over to "you"...

Edit: What! No Strike-through...?

[Webby]

As we were all saying before good case airflow is all you really need, and while you may laugh strapping a quiet fan to a passive card will make it a significantly better cooler with little to no noise if you pick the fan carefully. Often heatsinks designed to be run passive then run with a quiet fan will provide better cooling than a stock cooled or even after market cooled product. This is obviously at the expense of space as passive cards are generally duel slot add a fan and it becomes triple slot

Oh and I feel obliged to say if you have a MM case why not water cool it? Thats what they were designed for after all!

Oh and you will not find an EVGA or BFG ATi card they make only nVidia products If you want equivilent performance to the 4850 in nVidia form then you want a 9800GTX+ but they are a bit more expensive than the 4850 in most cases.

[Pob255]

Wow 135c I think that's got to be near a record.
Strapping a fan to it sounds like a good idea.

not being able to see your case or even know what case is it leaves us with very little to work on to give you other advice.
Does sound like you have case air flow issues.

EDIT: I'd also like to point out that sticking a 120mm fan or simular onto a passive card often works very well, most graphics card stock coolers still insist on useing very small blowers, blower while low decibel are a vey differnt pitch from fans while is often what make the wooshing sound so noticeable in a pc, so a standard case fan added to a passive graphics card will often blend into the other fan sounds and not stick out.

[Bradmax57]

It looks like quite a monster of a heatsink mind, so a quiet fan on that maybe even better than some of the stock coolers and a lot quieter to boot

[format]

And to think I was mocked for suggesting putting a fan on this in another thread...

[Pob255]

Ahhh but he didn't buy it to be passive but because it was on cheap
And he seems to lack the case air flow to have a purely passive card.

EDIT: then again I strap fans to almost any heatsink . . .

[Rud91]

an HD 4850 with passive cooling...was always going to be tough

[Will404]

Ahhh but he didn't buy it to be passive but because it was on cheap
And he seems to lack the case air flow to have a purely passive card.

EDIT: then again I strap fans to almost any heatsink . . .

thouse P2 and P MMX cpu coolers were useful just the right size for the GPU on my old computer.
Had one for than, and another cooling the ram If they were removed it crashed. *though it cost £30 + £15 for RAM upgrade with the rest being second had freebies

Brings me back

[LuckyNV]

doesn't look like a good passive design to me, the fins are too densely packed and overall a small area to benefit from normal case convection airflow

I bet if you attached slow fan, 60-80mm at 1000rpm it'll do wonders.

[Pob255]

Strangely enough I've currently got a 50mm fan from a p3 slot1 cooler tied onto my motherboards PWM heatsink