Heat Questions

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Gum

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I recently got a Radeon 9250 128MB AGP 8X video card and I'm running a 864MHZ PIII 384MB RAM (I know it's not anything special. But that's all I have right now).

The thing is, whenever I play 3D-intenstive games (which I've been doing a lot of because I have been unable to with my old 32MB TNT2), such as Command & Conquer Generals, after about a half-hour, I begin to smell burning electronics... :|

However, it has been hotter than normal lately and all of my fans come on (I can hear it) to add to everything. My card does have a heatsink but as I said, I still smell stuff. Basically what I've been doing is as soon as I smell it, shut off my PC for an hour or so. It's fine when I'm just using my browser, watching videos, or playing Starcraft.

Do you think this is just me being paranoid, the new card being "broken in," or could this be a serious issue I need to address? Thanks.
 
Um well, first of all you could be smelling dust build up clean out the computer. Seeing as its a P3 im guessing u had it a while. Clean it out. Especially the fans.

If anything such as vid card or CPU is overheating most likely it will turn off. Check the cpu temperature. If its high check ure CPU fan.
 
This is kind of an emergency because I don't know if I will destroy my computer :\
 
download motherboard monitor 5 (google it for d/l link) itll tell u ur temps in real time, i dont know what ati tool there is for monitoring the grahics temperature but im sure there will be one. doesn sound like a heat problem. how many fans do u have in your case?
 
he probably hjas about 1 if that because it sounds like a prebuilt computer. it may be dust build up clean it out and if you do have any fans try to tidy up your wires along with if there is any wires on the heatsing of the card take them off of there.
 
I would think that this should be dust - since if you can smell burning electronics they are already broken. So on that front I imagine your safe.

But if your still not sure, you may want to check that all the fans are working all the time (as opposed to working at the start and getting gunked up or something.) and maybe consider getting some new heatsinks for your Graphics card and CPU. Since your using a PIII I guess your system is too old to have an activly cooled mobo chipset and so you shouldn't have to worry about that one.

Oh and yeah - clean it out.
 
Ok thanks.... Do you think it's safe to play with again or should I check this stuff out first?

The thing is, my computer is situated in such a way that opening the case is very difficult. It takes like 30 minutes just to get it all out. But I guess I'll have to do it again if I want to check. I just hate risking messing something up.

Also, the Motherboard Monitor 5 thing wants to install a driver on my computer. Can this do any damage? I've had bad experience with driver installation in the past.

Lastly, my computer has at least 2 or 3 fans. Probably 3 or more.
 
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