6800 with Zalman VF700-Cu VERY HOT!!

[krille]

A week ago I bought the Zalman VF700-Cu and I've now discovered my max temps under load (looped 3dm03 game tests all night) is 71C! With an average between 65C and 71C, while ambient tops ~46C. This is with a 6800NU (400/860, 16p6v, 1.4vcore). I think this is a little much.

Any explanation for these extreme temps?
Could I have used too little/too much AS5?
Should I try reapplying AS5 (how to clean AS5?) and reseat the heat sink?

Are these temps normal with this cooling?
Anyone else having a 6800 @ aprox same settings who could share his load temps?

Most important, are these temps safe?
Or should I seriously lower vcore or clock speeds?

Thanks, I'd appreciate any help in this matter!

[don_vercetti]

ok if you want my opinion, those are emminently reasonable temps. My 6800nu is clocked at 425/880, with 1.5v, and it's currently idling at 58c (very hot here at the moment). Hottest i've ever seen it is around 78c on mine, and it's fine. I'll run nature03 a couple of times, and see what it reaches, but it's been 100% stable so i'm not worried.

[don_vercetti]

well ok, mine reached 86c, i looped 3dmark nature 3 times. I think i might just take it down to 1.4v, and 420mhz. Still it was stable, and no artifacting or anything.

[krille]

Ok, cool. Just that I had hoped to get it down to 50-60C under load with the Zalman after having seen the reviews. Very well... seems like my card will survive after all?

[D4nnyOcean]

I put a Artic Cooling NV5 on my 6800GT and my temps are 47C idle 58C load. Seems to work very well. I had thought about getting the Zalman cooler but it was similar to my stock cooler in that it just stirred around the hot air instead of dumping it outside the case like the NV5.

[don_vercetti]

yeah should survive, mine's obviously been like this for a while, they are very heat resistant, if it started going over 90c i would get a bit worried and lower the clocks. until then, meh.

[krille]

I put a Artic Cooling NV5 on my 6800GT and my temps are 47C idle 58C load. Seems to work very well. I had thought about getting the Zalman cooler but it was similar to my stock cooler in that it just stirred around the hot air instead of dumping it outside the case like the NV5.

Actually I have the NV5 too (however it's revision one - which is supposed to have bad contact... also mine is actually *sucking* air from outside the case. Hmm.)

I'd try the NV5 too.. if it wasn't for that you can't reapply the zalman memory coolers (sticky tape)... and the Zalman is supposed to be better too. Hmm.. Maybe some sort of PCI fan could help. What do you think?

[justwOo]

Stevil posted something about putting an exhaust blower PCI slot card thing below the zalman helped temps quite a bit
it's somewhere in the aircooling section

[ugp]

nVidia cards from what I see and me using them so far run hot as it is.