X1950pro problems continued - someone save me please
Wondering if someone can give me some advice, as I have lost patience trying to fix my current issue.
Basically it is in regard to my X1950pro card which keeps powering off – it’s a well known issue and there are threads all over the net, I even started one here below….
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.p...290#post935290
To summarize the above, basically once the card hits around 55-60c (ie in intensive games) the screen goes black – the pc stays on and you have to reboot.
The way to fix this problem seems to involve the VRM chips (as circled in the pic in the thread above) with the default bog standard cooler not cooling them enough. So lots of people seem to have modded their card etc and fixed their issues and I thought about doing this. For a while I continued using my card with the fan at 100% and overall it was ok – only “black screening” every now and then, but it seemed to get gradually worse. The games which seem to cause this most are BF2 and Company of heroes and HL2.
At last though it appeared that my saviour had arrived – not wanting to self mod my card I was pleased to see the new Arctic cooling Accelero X2 cooler (a version of its cooler that was specifically usable for my card - includes a custom heatsink for the VRM) here it is http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.p...0&data=3&disc=
So anyway yesterday I take out my X1950pro remove the bog standard HSF, and carefully follow the instructions to the word, fit the actual hsf fine – fit the VRM heatsink, all seems fine. Card back in system – all looks good (in fact the new cooler seems to keep temps down a fair bit compared to old one which makes sense) but fire up BF2 and after 10mins of gaming – you guessed it “black screen power off” again
I am now at a loss to what to do. Despite the mod all being perfect that I have done I am now thinking maybe it is something else that is causing my problem? The official thread on my issue on the sapphire forum keeps mentioning insufficient power supplies here - http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/forum...2&page=1&pp=10 although some people specifically went and got more powerful PSU’s but still had the issue. My PSU is surely not the greatest in the world but I am loath to shell out more money to try and fix this issue. Part of me just wants to throw this card out the window and go but a new 8800GTS or something. For info my PSU is as in “my system” sig details. It’s basically a 500w PSU here’s the details http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/829...ion/index.html I notice that when I opened my pc – the PSU has the following details on it….
+5V +12V1 +12V2 +3.3V
28A 16A 17A 30A
What does this mean and should it be able to power my system? The packaging of my card says 450PSU min with 30A+ on +12V rail.
I will add that yesterday I spend a long time trying different things, I have used a Antec spot fan blowing extra air over my graphic card, I have cleared the overclock of my core duo cpu etc to lessen power usage. I have tried countless versions of catalyst drivers but im still having the “power off black screen issue”. I’m now thinking that after having used my card for so long maybe it’s to late to have put the correct cooling hsf on my card, maybe its perm damaged from black screening from before. I have to say that apart from this issue my pc is absolutely rock solid stable – no other issues. To sum up, I think my options are the following….
1. Give up on this card and buy a new graphic card – I like the look of the 8800GTS.
2. Try a new power supply – although seeing other people tried this in the official sapphire thread and still have the issue :(
Sorry it’s been such a long thread – but any experience advice would be appreciated as always.
best regards
B
Re: X1950pro problems continued - someone save me please
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I had a slightly different problem with mine which I've now solved, so wanted to spread the word ...
I've also got one of these cards (Connect3D X1950 Pro) second hand and had an overheating issue. Every time the card got to about 73 degrees it would crash my PC.
For me, and I haven't read this anywhere else on the web, I found that when I removed the stock heatsink there were two small (about 5mm x 15mm) bits of material that looked a bit like small plasters. These covered the blobs of white heat conducting putty that went over the three voltage modulator chips.
Looks like these were intended to protect the surface of the putty during manufacture and the factory forgot to remove them. I could be wrong about that, but either way I found that once I removed them and reseated the cooler (using Arctic Silver 5 on the graphics chip itself) my card now performs perfectly.
Never gets above 63 degrees (well, not during Bioshock or Oblivion on max settings, anyway) and doesn't crash at all. Took a few days for it to work properly, which might be to do with the Arctic 5 or the putty (or both) needing to settle in properly, but straight away it would last maybe 10 minutes before crashing rather than the 1 or 2 minutes it took previously. Presumably the Arctic 5 helped reduce GPU temperatures, and that combined with removing the sticker things helped to keep the voltage modulators cooler.
Hope that helps somebody. Saved me the cost and effort of an Accelero cooler.
Re: X1950pro problems continued - someone save me please
Where these plastic strips that you removed then?
Re: X1950pro problems continued - someone save me please
If you look at the very first link in this post, it links to a page with a picture where the volt modulator chips are (picture shows a blue board, three chips with red circles around them). The white putty stuff was to cover those chips, and the strips were over the putty.
