Removing The Case Door While Folding Helps Lower Temperature

[Apoptosis]

I'm running a pair of GeForce GTX 280's for the folding team and have the fans at 100% and the shaders overclocked up to 1500MHz from 1350MHz for better performance. The noise from the fans being at 100% was getting annoying, so I put the case door back on the CoolerMaster Cosmos case and look what it did to the temperature in minutes...

gpu_temps.jpg (108.01 KiB) Viewed 929 times

It went from 73C to 84C on one of the GPU's... I took the door off and it went back down to 72-74C range... For the first GPU... Amazing difference.

[Darkstar]

took the door off mine too

[Apoptosis]

bleh... hardy har har

That does the trick as well... lol

[geokilla]

Hehe mine tops out at 62C with those 511 point WU with the fan spinning at only 40%.

[InspectahACE]

Does overclocking the shaders put that much more heat out ? seems a tad high for the fan to be at 100% on that gpu.

[werty316]

Upping the shaders for folding doesn't increase heat at all. Drop the core & memory clocks; up the shaders and fold on.

[InspectahACE]

ok was just weird seeing those temps at 100% fan speed on a 280. I know the top one always gets hotter, but even when I only had 1 280, the fan speed never went higher than 75% at those temps so I was a little worried there.

[Apoptosis]

Does overclocking the shaders put that much more heat out ? seems a tad high for the fan to be at 100% on that gpu.

At idle they run 51/55.... under load they run 74/85C

Right now both GPUs are working on project 5911 and the PC keeps locking up... ;(

Not sure what the deal is right now. I got the case door off, the cards running at factory clocks with the fans at 100%... no screen saver... no clue... Temps are 62/65 right now since it's 7am and I cranked down the A/C overnight.

[InspectahACE]

bummer..something is weird there. I OC'd my shaders(since ya said it does better perf on your first post)and 5911 was fine and dandy on my gpu's..just took longer.

[vbironchef]

Apoptosis, it does look like you are having the same issue as me. I believe that heat is the reason for our computer lock-up or freezes. That's why I took one 280 out of my case. I think that F@H is working on the problem. I will check their site to see if any changes will happen in the future. I just looked and other people are having heat isssues as well. I hope F@H will try to fix the problem.

Just would like to add that I noticed I was folding fine with two 280's until windows xp pro sp3 had updates. After they were installed F@H went bad. I don't know if they are related, I just thought I would like to give more info. Even with only one card in, I still am having unexplained shut downs and my back-up power surge protector will start to beep. I checked to see if my back-up power supply was faulty, but it is working properly. How is your rig doing?

One more thing I would like to say: I am going to give F@H two weeks to fix these issues before I stop folding for good. I was going to build another rig for the comp. but I don't see how it will help if F@H has too many bugs to make it worthwhile.

[vbironchef]

Update: I rolled back my drivers for my 280 to 181.20. The reason I am trying this is because this driver version is the last one to say that it supports F@H. When my next WU finishes, I will put my second 280 in and see if it will work. I am hoping this works. Will let everyone know how it turns out. Edit: It appears to be working!!!!!!! It gave me some errors about unstable machine, but the programs never shut down. I let the F@H run and has started both cards! So far so good!
I have not put my side panel on yet because I'm not sure how long this is going to last. We will see.

[vbironchef]

still getting major buggs. Guess it's time to build a new rig to see if one of my 280's are bad. Wish I knew what to do.

[geokilla]

Don't worry, you're not the only one getting BSODs with NVIDIA folding. I get tons when folding 511 point WU on my 9600GT and try to alt+tab through say Firefox and MSN. Heck I can't even watch something on Media Player Classic properly with those 511 point WU.

My BSODs are on Windows XP Pro 32 bit. If you're on Vista or Windows 7, enable Aero. Apparently these slow downs and BSODs disappear when running Folding@Home.

[InspectahACE]

still getting major buggs. Guess it's time to build a new rig to see if one of my 280's are bad. Wish I knew what to do.

Considering I sold my 280 for issues, I would bet on something isn't right. I don't even think the 280 gpu is right to begin with. I've never had one iota of an issue with the 285s while I had nothing but problems on the 280.my guess would be there were bugs galore in the 280 and the 285 worked them out. Never had one BSOD while folding since upgrading

[vbironchef]

I guess we getting off topic so maybe we should open a new thread. I have no issues folding with one card. It's only when I try to start the second card that I run into issues. Might be heat, might be F@H's program, could be a lot of things. One thing for sure is that my rig doesn't like F@H with two cards.