Heat problem with nVidia cards?

[MikeSp]

While this might sound to some as trolling, it is NOT. I am ready to either purchase a botique-made gaming machine or make it myself so I can pass my current aging P4 machine to a family member that needs it ASAP. Due to the number of irons in the fire for me, I chose to be lazy and order a custom made computer by a well-known brand and it had the nVidia 790i motherboard and 280 video card. A day after it was ordered, a friend emailed me a couple of news articles about nVidia videocards in laptops running waaay too hot and that nVidia has known about the problem for perhaps a year. For fear of wasting hard-earned money, I RMA'd the computer back to the company.

After searching videocard forums, I don't find much info regarding nVidia 8xxx and 9xxx cards overheating when not OC'd and found a few about the 280 overheating.

My question (FINALLY) is--are nVidia 8xxx and 9xxx as well as the 280 cards safe from overheating when not used in laptops and not OC'd and I can be confident in purchasing a desktop computer that uses one (or two) or build a computer that uses one or is there really a heat issue with nVidia GPU's???

Opinions/thoughts??

MikeSp

 

[Nenu]

They get pretty warm but easily within tolerance if used in an adequately ventilated case.
Cards are designed to work at stock speed in environments more hostile than the average home.
In mid summer, its possible the card will run near its maximum temp which is hot but it should still function if not overclocked.

Due to this overhead, if you can keep the card cooler, you can liberate a lot of overclocking potential.
To this end there are aftermarket heatsinks like the Accelero S1 and HR-03 that are amazingly good and allow for amazing overclocks while still running cooler than the stock heatsink.
I'm using the S1 on my 8800GT and have a 20% overclock while never exceeding 50C in mid summer

So its not true to say they run too hot.
If you get a card that runs too hot at stock speed (ie causes it to crash), you can return it as faulty.

 

[doox00]

my gtx 260 idles in 40's and loads at 71 with a healthy overclock.