Fanless ASUS 7600GS problem

Richard Longfellow

Richard Longfellow

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I'm curious if anyone else here has experience with the passive coolers on Asus brand video cards. I just bought a used 512 MB fanless Asus 7600GS off eBay, and was dismayed to find the heatsink quite loosely mounted. It's a big aluminum wraparound type, probably weighs a good 14 ounces by itself, but is attached to the board by only two weak spring clips.

The cards acts up after about ten minutes-first with odd artifacts, then shuts down and/or causes fatal errors. I kept it alive long enough to read the NTune temps, and it only ran around 55 deg idle, but still wiped out. I removed the heatsink, cleaned it and the GPU thoroughly, applied arctic silver and remounted, same results. I fear it may have been smoked before I got it...

Strangest part is that the card's circuit board has 4 predrilled and insulated bolt holes, but Asus didn't use them. :roll:
 
while 55 deg idle isn't bad .. it's not the best. The card is obviously overheating as you can already probably tell. Pretty much the main reason for artifacts after a period of time is a heat issue. The problem is though, under heavy load the temps must skyrocket to the 100deg or so temps. The only reason why I say this is because without fans there's no added cooling happening. When a fan cooled card gets hotter the fan will speed up thus keeping it under temp., while I've never heard of a heatsink able to asorb more heat because the surroundings are warmer ... but I guess I learn new things every day so who knows :D

All in all what I'm trying to say is with those idle temps, it probably didn't come out of the factory at them. When the heatsink came out of the factory I'd say it Idled at around 35 - 45 and only got as hot as 75 under load so your card is probably smoked. Yet these are all just assumptions since I've never owned a non-fanned cooled card and that info I pulled literally outa my butt. It seemed logical enough just to type it up though.
 
[quote name='Richard Longfellow']I'm curious if anyone else here has experience with the passive coolers on Asus brand video cards. I just bought a used 512 MB fanless Asus 7600GS off eBay, and was dismayed to find the heatsink quite loosely mounted. It's a big aluminum wraparound type, probably weighs a good 14 ounces by itself, but is attached to the board by only two weak spring clips.

The cards acts up after about ten minutes-first with odd artifacts, then shuts down and/or causes fatal errors. I kept it alive long enough to read the NTune temps, and it only ran around 55 deg idle, but still wiped out. I removed the heatsink, cleaned it and the GPU thoroughly, applied arctic silver and remounted, same results. I fear it may have been smoked before I got it...

Strangest part is that the card's circuit board has 4 predrilled and insulated bolt holes, but Asus didn't use them. :roll:[/quote]



You should try buying a fan for it, newegg I think has some.

Shouldnt cost more than 10 bucks, and lets just hope that heating Is the problem, or else you may have just been screwed.
 
Well, the GPU was smoked, but the guy took care of me with a full refund. Sooo...

I'm still on the prowl for a slight upgrade over my EVGA 7600 GS, and was considering the following 8600GT ($75 after rebate):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127310

I want another fanless card, low power consumption, under $100, and a mild performance enhancement over the 7600GS. All of the reviews I read on sub-8800 8-series cards say they're all dogs. But, most of the reviews I found on Google were published right as these cards were released. My question is, have the newer NVidia drivers improved the performance of the 8xxx chips at all?
 
Unless DX10 is necessary, I'd honestly look at a 7600GT. It actually beat the 8600GT in a lot of when originally tested... not sure how much drivers have helped but drivers don't really do much for performance IMO.

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=637&p=0

Of course, if you can't find a 7600GT of equal price to the 8600GT you're looking at then you might as well get the 8600GT.
 
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