Some noob questions

[lumas7]

Hi all, basically i m not a very technical guy when it comes to hardware and graphics card was looking to try some overclocking to make full use of my 4870x2, can someone help me with this qn?

1) If I am gaming like 5-6 hours, is it safe to set the fan to 100% throughout the whole time? will the fan like burnout if i do this too often?

2) What is the normal or optimal temperature my graphics card should be, i m getting 70'c now when i m running a game like say warhammer online

3) Is there any threads that really teaches me the very basics of overclocking or maybe some websites that sort of makes things simple to understand?

4) o and if possible, can someone like recommend me some safe specs for overclocking. Something that is reasonably safe.

 

[oli_ramsay]

1- Yes it's fine, the fan's designed to run at 100%

2- GPUs can withstand much higher temps than CPUs, 70c is fine.

3- Try here and here

4- see 3.

 

[PennySavre]

The fan will probably be noisey if we're talking turning it to a full 100% speed in the settings. I don't even try 100% on a 4800 cooler for that reason.

 

[phanbuey]

1) Yes its safe - those fans are rated for a long time before they burn out. usually 50,000 hours which is like 5.7 years.

2) Modern cards are usually rated for 100C - then the fan will kick up big time. At 105C is ussually when the thermal controls will kick in to prevent damage. Stock, unmodded cooling will usually keep the card at 65 - 90 C depending on the card. ATI tends to run hotter (80-95C). 70C is fine unless your fan is at 100% and its still getting 70C then you might wanna improve case airflow.

3) http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/33

4) Its EXTREMELY rare to break a videocard by overclocking alone. Usually a volt-mod (more juice through the GPU) combined with crappy cooling is required to toast a card. So for that, I would say to keep going until games crash, then back off a bit. No damage will be done to the card.

 

[spearman914]

1. Yes but noisy, might need headsets.

2. I got 90C load at 80% fan speed 24/7 no probs.

3. If ur using the stock cooler don't bother ocing the x2, they get hot really quick even at 100% fan speed.

4. Go with what phanbuey said. But volt mod's can break the GPU, do at ur own risk.