gfx card cooler

I recently upgraded to a quad due to a slight oops with a chipset fan. Who'd figure that if you accidentally stop the chipset fan from spinning that you can cook your mobo!

Anyways, having replaced it with the Asus micro in my sig, I'm having what I suspect to be overheating problems again with either my 3870 or the onboard Intel graphics. I've updated the BIOS on the 3870 so that the fan spins up (sounds like a lancaster bomber preparing to take off now) so unless I've already borked it then I only want to replace the standard HIS cooler for quietness. What I am concerned with, is that even disabling everything I can think of in the BIOS to disable the onboard gfx, it's still getting really toasty... so maybe the chipset overheating is what is causing my problem.

Before I continue, airflow through the case is in my opinion good. There's (not including the dual slotted gfx cooler which exhausts directly out of the case) 3x12cm + 1x9cm + crossflow intake fans, and 1x12cm, 1x8cm and a PCI-slot-blower-thingy exhaust fans. Temps reported for ambient and CPU temps are around 33 degrees. With the new BIOS, the 3870 hits the 70's under load.

Now I'm thinking of replacing the gfx cooler with a Zalman VF-1000 or Thermalright HR-03-GT. Any suggestions? (I've never replaced a gfx cooler before).

What I can't find is a chipset cooler that states it'll control an iG35 chipset. Any suggestions baring in mind that this is a micro ATX board, so can't be the size of the Empire State Building? (i.e. lower profile than a standard PCI slot, and fit in between the PCI-Ex gfx slot and the CPU cooler)

Oh, I guess I should have stated the problem I'm getting....

Whilst playing LoTRO, the PC intermitently spontaneously reboots. No BSoD, no lockup, just a So long and thanks for all the fish.

Have to say it sounds more like a motherboard issue rather than a GPU issue, If your graphics are unstable your screen will go black or artifact but you don't normally reboot. The G33/35 chipsets do get quite warm under load mine used to get the base of my Thermalright HR05 IFX (passive) to about 50°C according to a temp probe was overclocked to a FSB of 499 though.

You could stress the CPU/NB using Orthos/Prime/Intel Burn Test and keep it under full load for a few hours to make sure they are stable if they are then move onto Furmark for stability testing the GPU it will get it hotter than any game you might be playing and if it falls over ie reboots you have your issue but check the CPU/Nb/RAM first as these get stressed a bit during Furmark as well.

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Originally Posted by ajones

Oh, I guess I should have stated the problem I'm getting....

Whilst playing LoTRO, the PC intermitently spontaneously reboots. No BSoD, no lockup, just a So long and thanks for all the fish.

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Start > right-click My Computer > Advanced tab > Under Startup and Recover click Settings > Untick Automatically restart and see if you get any errors.

While it could be heat causeing reboots I'd suspect not off hand, as it has the rather good asus q-fan system, which does a good job of montoring temps and adjusting the fan speeds of fans pluged onto it.

The moement it reboots go into the bios and check the motherboard temp (that should give you a fairly accurate number on the chipset temp)

but my guess would be ether memeory or psu problems, do as mycarsavw said and disable the auto-reboot as often in these situations windows is actually blue screening just rebooting too fast to actually show it. :rolleyes:

Also as webby sugested some stress testing with monitoring software up to keep an eye on temps and voltage values would be a good idea.
I'd also consider running the ATi tool stress test at the same time as Orthos (or simular) to give you a full cpu+memory+graphics card workout.

Personally speaking here from the little info you've given us I'd lean toward a memory problem, my reason is that you say it does it under LotR, MMO's are the bigest system memory hoggers of any game and tend to be the games with the most memory leaks as well. :(