My vid card came in!

[AntiVisual]

My used x800xt just arrived at my work. Good lord the thing weighs like a pound with the heatsink and stuff. I can't wait to get home and hooked up! hopefully my videos will look much better after this.

I got it used for $280 from a guy on ebay!

[Phelan Ward]

Waaahh, I get my new computer sometime next week. I can hardly wait. Right now I'm running the game on 512mg of ram and an unsupported graphics card (fx5200) low settings on lowest resolution, the game looks like crap for me. I see screen shots of Karkand and I didn't even know there was supposed to be sky in that map. You guys get some orange dust but my game looks like a flippin sandstorm. After I get about 200 feet in the air on any map with a hint of fog I can't see land anymore.

I got my computer from unitedmicro.com, I really wanted to build it but my parents didn't want me doing that with my college computer. I just made it clear that I wasn't buying a POS Dell or anything that can't run Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion when it comes out.

[John CANavar]

nice to hear that AV !

I have the same card

[walrus]

better go ahead and bore a large circle in your side-panel for a 120mm casefan cuz that XT will run hot! dont worry about the XT itself, its heatsink will dish all that heat into your case, beefing up ambient temperatures and thus cooking your CPU, Northbridge, and PSU! You might want to run 3Dmark2005 and monitor any rise in your ambient case temp before a 4-hour BF2 session. Unless you're running stock timings.

[Muld]

Originally Posted by AntiVisual

My used x800xt just arrived at my work. Good lord the thing weighs like a pound with the heatsink and stuff. I can't wait to get home and hooked up! hopefully my videos will look much better after this.

I got it used for $280 from a guy on ebay!

Glad it works . First time I read it I thought it said x800xl and I was like you can get a new one for $280.

[AntiVisual]

Originally Posted by walrus

better go ahead and bore a large circle in your side-panel for a 120mm casefan cuz that XT will run hot! dont worry about the XT itself, its heatsink will dish all that heat into your case, beefing up ambient temperatures and thus cooking your CPU, Northbridge, and PSU! You might want to run 3Dmark2005 and monitor any rise in your ambient case temp before a 4-hour BF2 session. Unless you're running stock timings.

I am probably going to leave my side panel off, as my place doesn't get real dusty or anything. I have 3 case fans and a pretty large cooler master processor fan though, so, I think I'll be ok.

[JMJ]

Originally Posted by AntiVisual

I am probably going to leave my side panel off, as my place doesn't get real dusty or anything. I have 3 case fans and a pretty large cooler master processor fan though, so, I think I'll be ok.

Depends on the temperature of your house. I have an Athlon64 3700+, 3HD's, 480W PSU, and an ATI X800XT-PE video card. With my house in the mid 70's I have no heating issues at all in my system. I monitor temps on CPU/GPU/Mobo/HD's. If it gets hot in my house I'll pull the side of the case off, but it's really not necessary. If you have proper airflow with minimal impedance, you'll have no issues at all. It's worth taking an extra hour or so to get all cables out of the way of good airflow. Here's the inside of my case:



FYI, the bending video card is no longer like that. I noticed it right after taking the picture when I cleaned up the cabling and installed the new GPU cooler (Zalman VF700-Cu). I re-routed the power cable to hold it up. That cooler is pretty heavy on my GPU

[TG_Snap]

Originally Posted by JMJ

FYI, the bending video card is no longer like that. I noticed it right after taking the picture when I cleaned up the cabling and installed the new GPU cooler (Zalman VF700-Cu). I re-routed the power cable to hold it up. That cooler is pretty heavy on my GPU

lmao @ card bending, heavy = good

[Levi]

Or you can get a water-cooler.

[icky]

Originally Posted by AntiVisual

I am probably going to leave my side panel off, as my place doesn't get real dusty or anything. I have 3 case fans and a pretty large cooler master processor fan though, so, I think I'll be ok.

Leaving the case open is generally a bad idea. They design them so that air will move over the components as it goes through the case. With the side open, the intake air may not even go near some of the components. Typically, this means a path from the bottom front to the top back. Removing the side may improve cooling for items with their own heatsink and fan, but everything else will lose air movement.

[JMJ]

Originally Posted by icky

Leaving the case open is generally a bad idea. They design them so that air will move over the components as it goes through the case. With the side open, the intake air may not even go near some of the components. Typically, this means a path from the bottom front to the top back. Removing the side may improve cooling for items with their own heatsink and fan, but everything else will lose air movement.

Yup, one of my HD's goes up about 4-5C when I remove the case cover, even with the fan right in front of them.

[walrus]

JMJ, that 120mm harddrive fan is so money!

AV, if you're running stock timings then ambient heat wont matter. Me, I squeeze everything: RAM, CPU, GPU, striped Raid. If I added a stock X800XT my system would become a rice-cooker.

P4 - 2.0 @ 2.8
DDR400 @ 233
9800pro @ 425/348

[JMJ]

Originally Posted by walrus

JMJ, that 120mm harddrive fan is so money!

AV, if you're running stock timings then ambient heat wont matter. Me, I squeeze everything: RAM, CPU, GPU, striped Raid. If I added a stock X800XT my system would become a rice-cooker.

P4 - 2.0 @ 2.8
DDR400 @ 233
9800pro @ 425/348

It's meant to be there, it's an Antec Sonata case. There isn't one on the other side of the HD's, just the inside there. I have the 2-120mm fans in the case.

I did have an arctic cooler on my video card, that dropped case temps massively, but it went bad. It also made a "clicking" noise when running the fan less than 100%, which of course is most of the time because the video card controls it. Believe it or not, this PC is pretty quiet, I have a fanbus controller that I can turn down all fans, the system can be very quiet if the house is cool enough and you aren't gaming

[AntiVisual]

It didn't actually run as smoothly as I liked when trying to record. I think cause some of my RAM is 2700 and not the best quality. Still ran really well on medium, but i won't be able to record videos at that level yet. Don't have enough processing power I don't think.

I def need to do some tweaking as well.

[Syn]

Originally Posted by JMJ

I did have an arctic cooler on my video card, that dropped case temps massively, but it went bad. It also made a "clicking" noise when running the fan less than 100%, which of course is most of the time because the video card controls it.

How old was it? Because Arctic Cooling revised their x800 offering, with updated internals and ceramic bearing which fixed this very issue.