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I don't know if this is covered by this forum anymore, but anyway... it seems the best place
Back in about December, my sister got a new computer; a prebuilt system from Overclockers. It's got a GF 6600GT in it.
Just recently, she started having problems while playing Civ4, there would be flickery blocks appear all over the screen. We did all the software stuff; patches, drviers, reinstalls, etc and it didn't fix it so I put it down to a problem with Civ and that was that.
But today, (as her computer is better than mine), I tried to play some DoD on there and guess what. Yep, same problem. I got a screenshot but it doesn't really show the extent of it. Imagine these things appearing and disappearing very quickly allover the screen:
http://img501.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doddonner00175ph.jpg
So, it turns out that after about 5 minutes of DoD, her graphics card was running at 105 degrees C. Which, er, seems quite a lot and is no doubt the source of the green flickery blocks. And it idles on the desktop at about 67/68 degrees, which comparing this to some things I've found on forums, is not far off what should be reaching during huge busy 3d games. Not good. Apparently, you're liable for these glitches appearing over ~75.
So I took off the case, the fan on the card still seemed to be spinning although how effectively, I have no idea. Then I noticed something. Lodged under the CD/DVD drives in the spare drive spaces, was a fan. Not "slotted", but lodged, at a weird angle like it had just been stuffed in for somewhere to put it, and was partly caught up in all the wires and ribbon cables and such. Then I notice something else. There is no case extractor fan attached.
So, the case fan, for the last sixth months has been moving air around an empty drive bay. How brilliant. You would think a place called Overclockers would know a little about air flow.
So, I put that in the right place (ie sucking air out the back) and it's lowered the card temperature by about 3 degrees or so idling but that's nowhere near enough and we still have the same problem.
It's still covered under warranty (I think) so next week we'll be contacting Overclockers and seeing how possible it would be to get the card replaced (as it *used* to work fine presumably without getting so hot since we never got any graphics problems before, I'd prefer it was replaced - and that's assuming no damage has been done to it by the heat) but we may need to send back the whole computer which will be a pain :\ But I imagine we'll be getting some 3rd party cooling stuff too and maybe a fan at the bottom-front of the tower to improve air flow around the card.
So there you go, lesson for all of you is make sure your powerful and heat generating graphics cards are ventilated properly. Apparently stock cooling doesn't mean adequate cooling.
Back in about December, my sister got a new computer; a prebuilt system from Overclockers. It's got a GF 6600GT in it.
Just recently, she started having problems while playing Civ4, there would be flickery blocks appear all over the screen. We did all the software stuff; patches, drviers, reinstalls, etc and it didn't fix it so I put it down to a problem with Civ and that was that.
But today, (as her computer is better than mine), I tried to play some DoD on there and guess what. Yep, same problem. I got a screenshot but it doesn't really show the extent of it. Imagine these things appearing and disappearing very quickly allover the screen:
http://img501.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doddonner00175ph.jpg
So, it turns out that after about 5 minutes of DoD, her graphics card was running at 105 degrees C. Which, er, seems quite a lot and is no doubt the source of the green flickery blocks. And it idles on the desktop at about 67/68 degrees, which comparing this to some things I've found on forums, is not far off what should be reaching during huge busy 3d games. Not good. Apparently, you're liable for these glitches appearing over ~75.
So I took off the case, the fan on the card still seemed to be spinning although how effectively, I have no idea. Then I noticed something. Lodged under the CD/DVD drives in the spare drive spaces, was a fan. Not "slotted", but lodged, at a weird angle like it had just been stuffed in for somewhere to put it, and was partly caught up in all the wires and ribbon cables and such. Then I notice something else. There is no case extractor fan attached.
So, the case fan, for the last sixth months has been moving air around an empty drive bay. How brilliant. You would think a place called Overclockers would know a little about air flow.
So, I put that in the right place (ie sucking air out the back) and it's lowered the card temperature by about 3 degrees or so idling but that's nowhere near enough and we still have the same problem.
It's still covered under warranty (I think) so next week we'll be contacting Overclockers and seeing how possible it would be to get the card replaced (as it *used* to work fine presumably without getting so hot since we never got any graphics problems before, I'd prefer it was replaced - and that's assuming no damage has been done to it by the heat) but we may need to send back the whole computer which will be a pain :\ But I imagine we'll be getting some 3rd party cooling stuff too and maybe a fan at the bottom-front of the tower to improve air flow around the card.
So there you go, lesson for all of you is make sure your powerful and heat generating graphics cards are ventilated properly. Apparently stock cooling doesn't mean adequate cooling.
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I don't know if this is covered by this forum anymore, but anyway... it seems the best place
Back in about December, my sister got a new computer; a prebuilt system from Overclockers. It's got a GF 6600GT in it.
Just recently, she started having problems while playing Civ4, there would be flickery blocks appear all over the screen. We did all the software stuff; patches, drviers, reinstalls, etc and it didn't fix it so I put it down to a problem with Civ and that was that.
But today, (as her computer is better than mine), I tried to play some DoD on there and guess what. Yep, same problem. I got a screenshot but it doesn't really show the extent of it. Imagine these things appearing and disappearing very quickly allover the screen:
http://img501.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doddonner00175ph.jpg
So, it turns out that after about 5 minutes of DoD, her graphics card was running at 105 degrees C. Which, er, seems quite a lot and is no doubt the source of the green flickery blocks. And it idles on the desktop at about 67/68 degrees, which comparing this to some things I've found on forums, is not far off what should be reaching during huge busy 3d games. Not good. Apparently, you're liable for these glitches appearing over ~75.
So I took off the case, the fan on the card still seemed to be spinning although how effectively, I have no idea. Then I noticed something. Lodged under the CD/DVD drives in the spare drive spaces, was a fan. Not "slotted", but lodged, at a weird angle like it had just been stuffed in for somewhere to put it, and was partly caught up in all the wires and ribbon cables and such. Then I notice something else. There is no case extractor fan attached.
So, the case fan, for the last sixth months has been moving air around an empty drive bay. How brilliant. You would think a place called Overclockers would know a little about air flow.
So, I put that in the right place (ie sucking air out the back) and it's lowered the card temperature by about 3 degrees or so idling but that's nowhere near enough and we still have the same problem.
It's still covered under warranty (I think) so next week we'll be contacting Overclockers and seeing how possible it would be to get the card replaced (as it *used* to work fine presumably without getting so hot since we never got any graphics problems before, I'd prefer it was replaced - and that's assuming no damage has been done to it by the heat) but we may need to send back the whole computer which will be a pain :\ But I imagine we'll be getting some 3rd party cooling stuff too and maybe a fan at the bottom-front of the tower to improve air flow around the card.
So there you go, lesson for all of you is make sure your powerful and heat generating graphics cards are ventilated properly. Apparently stock cooling doesn't mean adequate cooling.
Back in about December, my sister got a new computer; a prebuilt system from Overclockers. It's got a GF 6600GT in it.
Just recently, she started having problems while playing Civ4, there would be flickery blocks appear all over the screen. We did all the software stuff; patches, drviers, reinstalls, etc and it didn't fix it so I put it down to a problem with Civ and that was that.
But today, (as her computer is better than mine), I tried to play some DoD on there and guess what. Yep, same problem. I got a screenshot but it doesn't really show the extent of it. Imagine these things appearing and disappearing very quickly allover the screen:
http://img501.imageshack.us/my.php?image=doddonner00175ph.jpg
So, it turns out that after about 5 minutes of DoD, her graphics card was running at 105 degrees C. Which, er, seems quite a lot and is no doubt the source of the green flickery blocks. And it idles on the desktop at about 67/68 degrees, which comparing this to some things I've found on forums, is not far off what should be reaching during huge busy 3d games. Not good. Apparently, you're liable for these glitches appearing over ~75.
So I took off the case, the fan on the card still seemed to be spinning although how effectively, I have no idea. Then I noticed something. Lodged under the CD/DVD drives in the spare drive spaces, was a fan. Not "slotted", but lodged, at a weird angle like it had just been stuffed in for somewhere to put it, and was partly caught up in all the wires and ribbon cables and such. Then I notice something else. There is no case extractor fan attached.
So, the case fan, for the last sixth months has been moving air around an empty drive bay. How brilliant. You would think a place called Overclockers would know a little about air flow.
So, I put that in the right place (ie sucking air out the back) and it's lowered the card temperature by about 3 degrees or so idling but that's nowhere near enough and we still have the same problem.
It's still covered under warranty (I think) so next week we'll be contacting Overclockers and seeing how possible it would be to get the card replaced (as it *used* to work fine presumably without getting so hot since we never got any graphics problems before, I'd prefer it was replaced - and that's assuming no damage has been done to it by the heat) but we may need to send back the whole computer which will be a pain :\ But I imagine we'll be getting some 3rd party cooling stuff too and maybe a fan at the bottom-front of the tower to improve air flow around the card.
So there you go, lesson for all of you is make sure your powerful and heat generating graphics cards are ventilated properly. Apparently stock cooling doesn't mean adequate cooling.