HOT Pcie Graphics Card

[-IRC-MIKE]

I haven't had any trouble playing AT ALL, but just out of curiosity today at lunch I touched the heatsink on my GPU (I was playing WoW) and the heatsink was rather cool, about room temperature. On the OTHER HAND, the wafer board out near the edge of the card was so hot that I could not hold my finger on it for more than two seconds. I bet it is at least 200 degrees. Does anyone have any similar problems where the GPU is nice and cool, but the surrounding board is so hot you could fry an egg?

It has been an AWESOME CARD, but I'm starting to worry and maybe think I should take some precautions to keep the thing cooler. AFAIK it is not overclocked.

[drunken_chef]

that's pretty much normal. XFX actually adds a HS that runs along the edge of the card to help it(so they say). PCBs are designed to take very high temperatures.

[juneau]

What card is it exactly? What's the airflow like in your case? I doubt it 200degrees. If it isn't causing problems then just forget about it.

[-IRC-MIKE]

Sorry for the delay.

The card is a 512mb Vision Tek ATI Raedon X1300 and it is a PCI Express.

Instead of having just a heatsink, it has an onboard fan and keeps the heatsink cool but around the edges of the card it is every bit of 160 degrees. If you put your finger on it you can not leave it on there more than 1-1.5 seconds without it burning you.

It has never been a problem, but I never really noticed it being that hot. I was just wondering if anyone else had experienced this and maybe it is the beginning of the end. I check water temps throughout the day sometimes and I know what 160 feels like and this seems to be somewhat hotter than that. You can stick your fingertip under 160 degree water and you're able to stand it for 3-4 seconds. Not so with the card. You wait two seconds and you have to blow your finger to cool it and feel it beginning to blister.

[juneau]

Now that's extremely odd. A x1300 is a very low powered/performance card that shouldn't generate much heat at all. I still can't understand why the PCB is becoming so hot.

[-IRC-MIKE]

Right now, before I started playing any games or anything like that.. it is fairly hot but not so hot that you have to pull away from it. I was playing WoW when I noticed it being so hot. I was reaching for something beside my computer (side of case is always off) and I felt the presence of heat from about 4 inches away from it and decided to investigate.

[Trooper110]

Take a look at the capacitors and make sure there's no obvious damage? I don't think that would cause the entire PCB to heat up, but you never know.

[-IRC-MIKE]

I played WoW actively for a solid hour today at lunch and the PCB never got anything near what it was. It was just warm to the touch...about the same temp as the heatsink with the fan blowing directly on it.

This is strange.