Something is smelling (graphics card)

crashmeister · 09-10-2003, 05:16 AM

No rodents living in the case.
My graphics card gets hot as hell and something does start to smell once in a while.
Fan is working and I only use the regular gui stuff - no 3d gaming.
Question is:
When the monitor is off it cools down.But I think it shouldn't make a difference to the graphics card whether the monitor is on or off.It still puts out the signals.Is that correct?

footfrisbee · 09-17-2003, 10:55 PM

I think video cards are now smart enough to know if the monitor is on or not and therefore if it needs to do any graphics processing or not.

Maybe it's not the card that smells but the monitor. Are you running a high refresh rate? I've seen, heard, and smelled a monitor go down due to an excessive refresh rate. I don't understand this since the monitor obviously supported that refresh rate.

crashmeister · 09-18-2003, 04:39 AM

Well - it's not high but higher than supposed.Could be the monitor.
Monitor specs change with use and age - usually not for the better.
I'll find out for sure in summer.Whatever it is will blow up when the temperature goes over 40 degrees (Celsius).

footfrisbee · 09-18-2003, 09:25 AM

Actually ambient temperature has only a small effect on the internal temperature of something that is regularly over 50 degrees. You probably should keep an eye on it constantly. Watch for little puffs of smoke to come from the back of the monitor

. You can always force X to run the monitor at a lower refresh rate. With GPUs running above 200MHz these days, videos cards are made to get hot.