I have an ATI Sapphire X1900 XT and I am having major heat problems. I have the stock VGA heatsink with a Lian Li PC-60BPLUSII computer case. I have kind of always had problems with this but I guess more so then usual since I took out the side cooling fan. Should I buy another VGA cooler or is this something I should contact ATI about regarding faulty hardware. The card runs at about 66 - 68 while doing nothing. I ran an artifacts test with ATI Tool for about 2 minutes before my PC locked up and restarted. I cannot enjoy any game because of this problem. Any tips on proper air circulation / a good VGA cooler to buy would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Intel E6300 Core 2 Duo
G.Skill 2GB DDR26400
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT
Seagate 320GB HDD
WD 80GB HDD
Windows XP Professional / Windows Vista

"The card runs at about 66 - 68 while doing nothing"

While that may be a bit warm, it's far from overheating. What's your system temp & CPU temp? How many case fans do you have & how are they arranged?

I think he's referring to Celsius.

"The card runs at about 66 - 68 while doing nothing." Which indeed is pretty hot.

Which monitoring program are you using? You should try another one and see if its reading the same/close temp.

You can always look into other coolers but that's extra money. Did you clean the fan on the video card?

"I think he's referring to Celsius"

I release he meant Celsius. That max safe temp for *most* GPUs is well over 100C. Many cards run in the 50's at idle, so mid 60's isn't extremely out of whack, but it is a bit on the warm side.

It looks somewhat typical of the Sapphire X1900XT though:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...

We need more info about his other temps & case cooling configuration.

I have 1 x 120mm in the front, 1 x 120mm on the side near the video card, and I have 1 80mm blow in on the CPU. I was using ATI Tool to monitor the fan and temp and all that. I am pretty sure its the VGA cooler because if I set the fan to work at 100% all the time then I don't get any artifacts and my games run flawless. I even tried underclocking the card but that didn't seem too cool it down much. I just cleaned out everything in the PC (fans, vents, ports, etc..). I was looking at other VGA coolers, but I would rather not spend the money unless I have too. I have noticed this happening more often. I had this problem before, but not nearly enough to make me investigate the problem.

Intel E6300 Core 2 Duo
G.Skill 2GB DDR26400
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT
Seagate 320GB HDD
WD 80GB HDD
Windows XP Professional / Windows Vista