Hot smell seemingly releated to Radeon

[beginner]

Okay. I'm not extremely technically oriented, so please bear with me and the length of this post. I'm desparate! My gamer teenager has a Compaq Presario 6470NZ that came with a Radeon 9000 (512 MB DDR SDRAM, Intel Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz) Purchased 4/03. Works great. December 03 we installed Radeon 9800 Pro. Fine...until last week when a bad "hot" smell started coming from the computer. Opened it up and the fan had completely broken off the graphics card. Put 9000 back in. Minor smell. Replaced with Radeon 9800XT. Bad hot smell. AFTER reading the manual thoroughly, reazlied we should have at least 300 watt power source for the 9800 Pro and the 9800XT- had 250. Today had CompUSA replace power source with 430 watt Antec Truepower. Still having bad hot smell with the 9800XT, very minor smell with the original 9000. Both the original and 9800XT wortk fine, but I know it shouldn't smell like that! The three other fans in the computer are working fine.

Called ATI and they said they'd never heard of anything like that. Emailed compaq/hp and they couldn't give me an answer because they don't know anything about that graphics card. Anybody every heard of this?!?

[Mickwish]

These graphics card chips will run extremely hot with inadequate cooling. Sounds like the cooling fan and heatsink were not properly attached in the first place.

They can run hot enough to melt the plastic surrounding the chip, or even the AGP socket it is in!. That smells bad, and can even be carcinogenic.

Another possibility is voltage. But if your 9000 used to work fine, then that shouldn't be an issue.

I'd ask the supplier to take it back and give you another, under warranty. One that the heatsink and fan stays onto!

Good luck, and Welcome to TechIMO!

Cheers
Mick

[Mickwish]

Thought: if the video card fan fell off, maybe it damaged something on the motherboard? Check all the capacitors around where the video card fan fell off onto and see if any are discoulored or "bulging" Might be that is the issue. I still think the actual 9800 vid card is the problem, though.

Cheers
Mick

[beginner]

Thanks Mick. Since it looks like the fan "stem" on the 9800Pro melted prior to coming off, I'm trying to figure out why. I'm getting ready to get inside the computer again to do the things you suggested, but want to get one of those anti-static wristbands first.

What do you think about this? I contacted Compaq about a warning in their warranty manual and wanted to know what you or anyone out there thought about it, especially related to the Radeon 9800XT (which is what I'm trying to use now) in the AGP slot. Also about their saying that replacing the internal power supply to 430 watts (from 250) could damage the system(mother) board.

From Compaq/HP: "The 2 amps restriction applies only to the PCI or AGP expansion slots This warning is a general caution to avoid overloading of the system. It is better to leave at least one of the slots free to avoid overloading of the system current. The 2 amps restriction cannot be avoided by replacing the power supply unit with 450 watts. We do not recommend replacing the power supply unit in the system as this may damage the system board.
Regarding your inquiry about the system board, this system board is a Pentium IV board that is integrated with the Intel 845G chipset."

Thanks all and glad to have found this site! (Believe it or not, I didn't even know what a heatsink was 24 hours ago! How problems can increase your knowledge!!!)

[Peter M]

You should know that the fan on the graphics card has little chance of helping itself if the overall ventilation inside the case isn't done properly. You probably need another case fan in there. If the only fan in there is the PSU fan blowing out the back, the next step is an intake fan in the lower front.

[musictoad]

Howdy guys,

I have a psu fan connecting the board, right? Okay , so anyways, i agree with Peter M in here , it is no use to cool anything off if there is just hot air. I also need to mount a fan in the front lower part of the box, thing is my room is very hot sometimes, and there are 2 windows, but doesnt help. Maybe if i buy myself a normal fan for the room , the one that stand on the legs? like a 40cm fan AEG or whatever, do you thnk this will help?

Cool.

Regards

MusicToad

[Xtreeme]

The video could have also FAILED overheating and thus melting fan. 60c and upwards on the backside of a gpu is pretty hot and that is typical with proper cooling. Either way SEND IT BACK to ati. Get a rma form. $ card. So dont get ripped off. You should only need 1 case fan in front of tower OR one on side case panel. One out back (psu fan). Ive never "needed" more. More makes case a little cooler but not tons. Right now though I have 3 case fans and a duel psu fan. Just cause there was room for them. One on side that sucks heat off the video card. I had it blowing in but it only forced hot gpu air over my NB heatsink and my mem/cpu. So that raised my system temps. LOL. Drawing air out it lowered it some. My bro. has only 2 and 0 heat issues. But if you have just 1 psu fan sucking air out, a faster cpu, fast mem and a 9800 you should def have two fans. Preferably a side case fan just for the video card!