nVidia and Hardy and everything

[Ari Torhamo]

la, 2008-04-19 kello 16:55 -0600, Karl Larsen kirjoitti:

>     Now I have all the covers off my computer. I am wondering now if the 
> bad nVidia problem is in fact just a heating problem? There is a heat 
> sink on the board that is for the video hardware.

Normally a motherboard overheats so much that there are noticeable
symptoms only if the chassis fan(s) don't work, motherboard chipset fan
doesn't work, or there's much dust around the fan (and the heatsink that
it's attached to) that causes overheating (your motherboard may only
have a heatsink without the fan).  A loose heatsink may also be a
reason. 

Of course, if you add a lot of hot running hardware to a badly
ventilated chassis, you may see symptoms of overheating anyway. Not so
easily though.

If you have an embedded graphics card on your motherboard, the above
applies to it too.

It's good to remember that when the components run cool, they last
longer - even when there are no symptoms of overheating present. And you
shouldn't wait for the symptoms - in fact, a component is overheating
when the temperature exeeds the manufacturers specifications - see the
manual or the manufacturers web site. Even the specified maximal
temperatures are often high, and you would do better to keep the
components even cooler.

Ari Torhamo