Anyone with a Mac Pro Case and a Hyper 880W PSU

[blackknight]

Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you with the same PSU as mine have had any trouble keeping it cool or had any strange behavior that might be from it overheating.

I have mine mounted in the top of the case where the Apple PSU would go (as do most people I think) and it has the fan facing up. The problem I see is that there is no space really to pull in fresh air. I have two DVD drives in the front tray, so it doesn't look like much air would come in from there.

The strange behavior that I'm having is that I'll be playing a game like Mirror's Edge or Grid and after about 10-15 mins, the game will freeze. After a few seconds, the fan on my 4870X2 goes full speed and stays there. Then the screen goes black and nothing happens. The only way to recover is to hard reset. I've monitored the temps on the GPU and they aren't that high really, at least not for this card.

Any ideas?

Black Knight

[aquamac]

Hi Blacknight,

This may relate to your problem:

Link

It seems it may be due to the Radeon's voltage regulators. I have my PS mounted identically to you with nvidia (GTX 280's x2 - off) and have no problems. Whilst they are saying that games do not push the cards enough, the x2 card is nearly always going to run hotter. I would put money on the card unless you have a 400 Watt PSU.

[HackJoe]

I went from the 630 Hiper to the 850 Corsair set up in the same manner... I agree with Aquamac, those X2's push 100'c underload thats alot of heat! slap and block on it and cool that beast off.

[blackknight]

I guess that's what I got to do. I'll get it on water shortly. I watched the temps and with my fan speed increase, they don't hit more than 80*C on load, but it could still be too much. I mean according to Catalyst Control Center, it's hardly in the red if at all. Oh well. I'll take your advice.

I will admit though, the PSU area does get very warm. Doesn't yours?

[HackJoe]

It did with the Hyper.. I tried really hard to keep the fan bracket divided when I was fitting the PSU. The corsair seems cooler the fan has a directional divided in it so the air great to where is needs.. You could cut out a hole in the shelf the same size/postion as the fan and have it pull the air from inside the case up and out the back?

[blackknight]

That won't work as I have two hdds mounted under the PSU. Plus, the fan is mounted on the top. I could cut a hole in the top of the case and put a fan grill on it, but I'll save that idea for another day.

[HackJoe]

Are you still having heat issues??

J.

[blackknight]

I found out that it was most likely the Realtek sound drivers. Ever since I removed them, GRID no longer crashes unexpectedly. Fallout 3 still does, but that's because it was written poorly.