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SLI 8800 GT's overheating

Q

quadman78

n00b
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
26
:confused:
Hi again guys.

After all the help from you guys on here, I have my rig up and running but ran into a bit of a hiccup tonight. I was playing Crysis for about 25 mins and my MSI dual core software alarm went off saying my GPUs were overheating at 88 degrees Celsius. I have been playing for several days now and this is the first time this has happened...any idea why this might have happened. My CPU has yet to break 50 degrees C. I'm playing with all settings on high and a res of 1920 x 1020 on XP.

Antec P182 case
MSI P7N Diamond
Q6600
4 gig corsair dominator ram
2 WD 500 GB RAID 1
2 BFG GeForce 8800 GT
Corsair 750W
Nirvana cpu cooler
I took out the upper hdd bay and put in an extra 120mm fan blowing straight on the GPU's and haven't started overclocking yet.

Thanks.
 
thats how hot they get. its normal. 8800gt's are known to get really hot. have you done the bios update for it? it usually lowers it 10c
 
but I really have to ask...how do you like the P7N Q6600 combo? (I have a P7N Diamond coming tomorrow, and am trying to decide weather or not to get a Q6600 or Q9450) There are almost NO reviews about the MOBO out there, so what is your take? Thanks/Sorry
 
BIGJ said:
but I really have to ask...how do you like the P7N Q6600 combo? (I have a P7N Diamond coming tomorrow, and am trying to decide weather or not to get a Q6600 or Q9450) There are almost NO reviews about the MOBO out there, so what is your take? Thanks/Sorry
Click to expand...

I had a P7N Diamond and a X3220 (much like a Q6600). It was the single most infuriating experience I've ever had with a computer in my life. It seems that with these boards you either get lucky (check out the thread over at XtremeSystems and you will see people running 4+Ghz on air with Q6600s and the P7N Diamond) or screwed.

I got screwed. Extra cooling, replacing the thermal paste on the board's heatsinks, nothing got me stable past 3.3Ghz. Everyone and their mother was blaming my chip, but I'd just had it at 3.5Ghz on an XFX 680i LT, so I knew it wasn't that. This was all watercooled, on a dedicated loop, with the X3220 under a Swiftech Apogee GT, with a Laing D5 Vario pump, T-line, and Swiftech MCR320 QuietPower radiator with 3 Yate Loon low speed 120mm fans. Temps never got above 55C full load...

I convinced Newegg to let me exchange and got an XFX 780i reference board and have not had a single issue since. 3.8Ghz stable, on less voltage than it took to see 3.3Ghz on the P7N Diamond. That said, I am fully expecting the thing to just explode on me one day for absolutely no reason at all like so many other reference boards, but until then I'm happy with it.

I also had a variety of USB related issues with the P7N Diamond -- for example, the board would not recognize my USB keyboards (all three of them) in BIOS if /anything/ else was plugged in to the USB ports. This totally stumped MSI support, and leads me to believe that my board might have been defective... but I'm not feeling brave enough to try again, not by any stretch.

The P7N Diamond looks amazing on paper and seems to have a great deal of potential (all solid capacitors, very robust power management system on the board, etc) but I think it has one of the worst BIOSes to ever make it to market on any board, from any vendor, ever. The shipping BIOS is utter trash, so if you get one and decide to play the game your first stop should be the MSI forums, to pick up whatever the latest beta BIOS is at that point.

Good luck. Some have had great luck with it, like I said. Others like myself (and I'm not alone, check the MSI forums) not so much.
 
Maybe get a PCI slot fan and sneak it in between them or sandwhich the 2 cards between 2.

I hear they help a lot with GPU cooling, just not overall case temps.
 
BIGJ said:
but I really have to ask...how do you like the P7N Q6600 combo? (I have a P7N Diamond coming tomorrow, and am trying to decide weather or not to get a Q6600 or Q9450) There are almost NO reviews about the MOBO out there, so what is your take? Thanks/Sorry
Click to expand...

So far I really like it. I'm very new to OC'ing and this is very nOOb friendly. I was going to wait for a Q9450 as well, but for the price point I'm glad I didn't. Crysis runs sooper smooth, no other problems that I know of yet. The little playing around I did had my Q6600 up to 3.0 ghz with no problems. No stress testing yet though, still reading up on all of that.
 
hazard_one said:
thats how hot they get. its normal. 8800gt's are known to get really hot. have you done the bios update for it? it usually lowers it 10c
Click to expand...

I'm not sure...where would I get that? I did a google search and have found refrences to it but not d/l links.
 
I got a X3350 (9450) and a p7n diamond with sli 8800GT's and during games I usually run the fan to 100% and the temps are 59-60C using everest. You probably got to make the fan's spin a bit more and try getting a different program to look at your temps. I had a similar issue with the MSI Dual core utlitiy but I uninstalled it and used Everest. Since then no problems.

For prospect buyers looking to buy the p7n, I suggest don't buy it if your over clocking. I have horrible overclocking numbers with the board and the BIOS has many issues that MSI hasn't fixed yet for almost half a year. Those that don't overclock heavily or don't OC at all, this board is pretty nice. Had no problems getting to 3.2ghz. I'd say the biggest problem is the graphic card lay out. MSI did a bad job. If you have SLI you pretty much have no room except the PCIx1 slots and one PCIx16.
 
I'm the originator of the XS thread and one of the people who had early success with the P7N. After two failing evga 680i A1s, the P7N was able to take my Q6600 (on water mind you) to 4.05ghz with as little as 1.55v. That's impressive, even in the P35/X38/X48 world.

The BIOS has indeed been a great sore spot. Up until recently, BIOS releases have been temperamental to work with, and the obscure voltage settings made finding stability a royal pain. The good news is that MSI is listening to customer demands and it's latest BIOS release (1.1B8) gets rid of the esoteric voltage settings. The board should now be a great deal easier to overclock, and it does seem that people are having more and more success with it.

If you haven't upgraded the BIOS, I encourage you to do so quickly. If you're OCing on it, please do post your results on XS.
 
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