Best low end Video card

[Speedo]

Great. So how can you tell how a cooling fan has failed? The trail of black smoke from the back of the PC?

I forgot to mention that it was designed to be a passive cooler, no fan required The reviews showed him being able to keep decent temps even without a fan.

He doesn't seem to work quite as well under a long, heavy load. The temps will get up to 50-51C occasionally (51C being the highest I've seen), but that acceptable to me. Then you can close the game, pop up the temp monitor and watch the temp drop 8C in about 10 sec It's the first comp I've had where the CPU temp was consistantly lower than the chipset temp at idle. 'Course that's probably partly because it's an Asus A8N SLI-Premium board with the heatpipe and passive chipset cooling.

Only kidding, sounds like a great rig... but I'm not going 64 bit for a couple of years yet. Waiting for Xfire to mature and M2 to get released... and of course, saving the peniies to pay for it.

I know the feeling, but I decided to go ahead and jump in since my old comp had gone 3 years without being touched. Dunno if I'd go for M2 though, I kinda get the feeling that AMD is going to skip to DDR3 pretty quickly. Bet then, there's always something better just around the corner. *shrug*

 

[CruddyLeper]

Och, I'll come back to you when I've finished modding the case.

* Cruddy reaches for his hacksaw

 

[FriendlyFire]

If I were you, I'd get the heatsink and fan first - I'm running at about 35 degrees centigrade, albeit on a XP Mobile chip. XPM-2500 (I went 2600) are AMAZING... if you're mobo and memory can hack it, you can get 3 GHz (even more) out of the things!

EDIT: I just remembered, one of the issues with using Arctic Silver etc is that you have to redo it every couple of years. It sort of dries out/evaporates. Use Acetone to clean off the old stuff. Oh, and a really good tip - take the mobo out of the case, lay it on a flat, steady surface, take the fan off first - then the heatsink is a lot easier to take off. Long thin screwdriver down the slot to ease the spring tension, and another to lever the clip off.

There's a knack to it, but I've known people try it without even taking the mobo out of the case! Then they wonder why their computer doesn't work (because they've smashed great lumps out of the mobo, that's why).

Great Just checked my PS its only 8Amps (I know the top PS are 450w and 14A)

Yeah it looks Like I gotta spend some cash on a New heatsink/fan first.
Damm the termtake ones are looking to set me back around $40au

Thanks for the Artic silver tip: I had heard that Artic reduces heat be several degrees due to the quality but didnt know you had to re-gell it every few years (it must be a pain)

 

[CruddyLeper]

Acetone and cotton buds (Q-Tips) is a brialliant combo for cleaning paste.

Just don't spill it - it melts other plastics, but is fine on processors.