MSI 6600GT HSF question

J

jhokie

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2005
Messages
262
Let me preface this by saying that I have already purchased one 6600GT from newegg, which ran at 82 C+ while testing the card with World of Warcraft, until the card subsequently died from overheating while I was running a quake 3 timedemo at max details and full anti-aliasing/anisotropic filtering. So, I RMAed that card, and I have received a second MSI 6600GT.

In early testing with World of Warcraft I have found that this card runs slightly cooler than the previous card generally, at around 75-76 C most of the time, but when I enabled 8X anti-aliasing and max details, I noticed that card spiking up to 80 C. I have turned off the AA and filtering since then since I am afraid of what may happen.

When i took the new card out of the bag, I glanced at the cooling connection, and it looks to me from the outside that the thermal tape looks kinda crappily connected, possibly even slightly torn. So, my question is, what should I do? I've already RMAed one card, and I need to decide what I'm going to do with regards to this one. Should I remove the cooling unit, remove the thermal tape, and then apply some thermal grease instead? If so, what brand of thermal grease should I use? Would doing this noticably void my warranty if something were to go awry?

My second option I guess, is just to throw everything possible at the card, max AA and details, and just see if it can hold up over a prolonged period.

If anyone has any advice as to what I should do, I would really appreciate it, I'm not sure if Newegg would let me RMA the card a second time. Thanks for any responses.
 
the first card might not have died from heat. from what i have seen, these cards run hot as hell. mine runs in the 80's under load, and ive had it in the 90s. still ticking away here, i thought this was way too high also, but it seems to be holding up, and no artifacts. i could be wrong, but if it does burn because of heat, thats what the warrenty is for i guess. it wouldnt hurt to take of the sink and install some good thermal compound, ceramique would be good. i did it to mine. i dont think this is good cause to void a warrenty, but ya never know.
 
After installing the thermal grease, did you notice any significant improvement in the temperature?
 
sorry for the late post, but i didnt see a huge difference in temps, maybe 2-3 degrees at an idle.
 
I have two MSI 6600 GT's in SLI, and my temperatures are running between 40C - 55C. I haven't touched the heatsinks or the thermal grease on either cards. These temps were taken from the nvidia control panel in the system preferences. Plus I am running both the cards at 580MHz core and 1.17MHz memory. I am not sure what kind of air flow you have in your case, but I might have a look into that. But it has been my experience that the MSI 6600 GT cards are top notch.
 
I think that Anadtech did a review of the 6600GT line a month or so ago (PCI-E cards) and they noted that the MSI was incredibly poorly constructed; the heatsink assembly was really loose. You can resolve this by redoing your cooling solution; just take off the heatsink, replace the thermal paste, and then, when you put the card back on, try and tighten up the heatsink with the card. You could use a "ghetto" method and just rubber band the heatsink down, or get an aftermarket cooler, such as an artic cooler.
 
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