Video card problem.

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u8myrice

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 6, 2005
Messages
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A friend has a 9800 Pro. The fan on it broke and he didn't know. His system crashed when he was playing video game recently. Now, every time he plays video game (WoW mostly) it crashes his system.

Did the fan being broken affected the computer? Did he damage his GPU?

Everyday computer tasks (surfing the net, microsoft word) is fine. But as soon as he fire some games up, it crashes.

Any insights on this? Thanks.
 
Well, if the fan broke, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's killed the card. It just means that when he fires up a game (which is graphically intensive, unlike word, windows, etc.) the card overheats and shuts down to prevent damage. A good solution would be either replacing the fan, pointing a fan towards the card, or replacing the stock cooling solution alltogether with something like this.
 
He said he fixed the fan. It works now (spins like new) but it still does the same thing.
 
u8myrice said:
He said he fixed the fan. It works now (spins like new) but it still does the same thing.
Click to expand...

It's unlikely that the card got hot enough and stayed hot enough for long enough to fry itself. Even though he thinks he fixed it, it may not be at 100% still.
 
Well. Would playing WoW on highest setting possible for the card on a 20" Samsung LCD for like 10+ hrs/day kill the card?

...because that's his habit. I think that would generate enough heat to kill the card. Plus he's in a dorm, not alot of cold air.
 
If he can still run Windows (excel, word, etc.) the card is probably still fine. I had a 9800 pro and it could get pretty hot with the weak HSF, but it ran ok. If the games are still crashing I bet the stock heatsink and fan are just past their prime (they were never really even suitable in the first place in my opinion). If he feels comfortable doing so, he should get a new HSF for it as well as some Arctic Silver thermal paste. I use AS Ceramique and it works pretty good, just not quite as good as say AS5. Some good GPU coolers for the 9800p include the Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer as well as the Zalman one mentioned above. If installed properly, your friend should have no problems. Good luck ;)

Just in case, here's a link for ya http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

The instructions are mainly for cpus, but it's the same general idea. I learned off of these instructions.
 
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