Heat from GeForce 9800 GX2 causing system crashes?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted March 19th 2008 6:05AM
posted March 19th 2008 6:05AM
By now you've had a chance to sample the reviews on nVIDIA's new flagship GeForce 9800 X2 graphics card right? Good, so did you happen to see the comments from bit-tech about heat? During their testing, bit-tech encountered "a number of heat-related crashes, hard locks and instabilities" with their ASUS Striker II Formula motherboard. They claim with 100% certainty that all the issues were related to the installation of the GeForce 9800 GX2. Apparently, the heat generated by the card coupled with 9800 GX2's air-flow restricting footprint caused the motherboard to enter an automatic self-protect mode as board components exceeded 90 degrees Celsius (190-degrees Fahrenheit) -- the GPUs never exceeded a reasonable 85 degrees Celsius. A fan placed directly above the motherboard's south bridge (responsible for HDD controller, I/O, etc) fixed the problem. Consider yourselves warned.
The overheating ONLY happens with the 9800 GX2 in the board. I've had any number of different cards (including 3-way SLI 8800 Ultras) in the board and this is the first time it has exhibited stability problems. It's because the card has a metal cover (including 'underneath' the card when it sits in a PCIe slot) and that's radiating heat into the pocket where the NF200 chip is sitting.
Temperatures of the heatsinks (north, south and nf200) approach 65'C at idle (load hits nearer 70'C) - that's too hot to touch for most people. The chips underneath those heatsinks are even hotter - the board automatically shuts down if temperatures of any of the monitored components hits 90'C and that happened on more than one occasion. Normally heatsinks are warm to the touch and if they're colder, they're not doing their job. This board's cooling solution is trying to do its job, but it's unable to because of the hot pockets of air.
I don't think Asus knew a great deal about the 9800 GX2 when it designed this board about 6 months ago... but I'm sure Nvidia did know about it when it was certified for SLI.
I think it's hillarious that Engadget will report problems on a graphics card that was barely released (yesterday) but, will not report on the overheating problems of the MacBook Air. ...which has been well documented on reputable sites and even Apple acknowledged this by releasing an update.
I guess Apple has a policy of revoking ad dollars if someone prints a negative story...
I R TRoLl
Not really... Let me explain it in simple terms so you can understand.
Engadget is reporting on something that "Jim's uncle's cousin's friend" said. Especially in building a system from the ground up, there are MANY variables. This could possibly be an issue and it could possibly not. Bit-Tech (which I do read daily), could have also had a different hardware or firmware version than the end user receives. If Engadget chooses to call out only PC related issues that may or may not exist, this causes these companies' stock values to drop. This is because the investors sell anticipating a problem with all current stock and anticipate a huge recall, slow sales, or massive profit drops due to fixing the issues at hand.
If Engadget were to report all things equally, investors would look at this as something to be aware of. If Engadget chooses to only cherry-pick PC related items, this causes a problem. Investors only catch this bad news in the poor market conditions that currently exist.
I hope your head doesn't hurt after that...
That sounds like a motherboard problem not GFX card. The GFX card was designed to ATX spec (One would assume) and the mobo was not designed to take into account the airflow restrictions imposed by a full sized expansion card. If this happens call your mobo manufacturer.
It's a board certified by Nvidia since it's an SLI motherboard.
Thats kinda funny... I still think I'm right. But that could just be my asshole expanding to eventually consume the universe.