Problem with Fan Noise when running SC2

Hello fellow owners,

I just received my m17x R2 this past Friday (ATI HD 5870 CF). I've ran into two problems. It's been over 5 years since I've used a PC so please bear with me (been using Imac).

First, when I tried installing Warcraft III, everything is fine until I log onto battle.net and a patch needs to be downloaded to play the game online. It states that the hard drive cannot be found but after uninstalling and reinstalling the game a four times, I finally got the update to work.

I go into options and to my amazement, the highest resolution that I can select is 1600 x 1000? I purchased the 1900 x 1200 screen. So I checked my Imac and even that piece of junk can display 1900 X 1200 without any issues.

So after logging off, I tried to log back on Saturday and I get the error message of a hard drive not being available even though I've already updated to the current patch. Hence, I've given up and decided to uninstall and play the game flawlessly on my Imac.

Now the main reason why I bought the m17x is to play SC2. My Imac could play it but at the lowest resolutions.

Now whenever I play this game (stock drivers), the fans go extra extra loud. On full blast. I enabled and disabled crossfire. Doesn't do much for the sound, though, by disabling crossfire, my online portrait in SC2 is properly displayed (Diablo Marine).

Is there something wrong with my GPU? During the whole time the game is being played, the fan is on full blast, and once I quit the game, it's so quiet I can hear a pin drop.

Please help me out. Thank you in advance.

 

The system is working to keep itself cooler... It's a good thing.

 

^^ Yup maybe these posts are the reason that Dell keeps deciding to cripple the AW systems. To many ppl worried about fan noise instead of actually being happy that their systems are being cooled. No offense to the OP

 

Thanks for your response. But my concerns with my machine stems from the fact that prior to purchasing it, I read a few review articles as well as watch quite a few online review clips on youtube.

Those reviews ran games like left for dead 2, starcraft 2, crysis, etc., and none of them ever seem to have the fan going at full blast while running the game. And the articles seem to praise the system for being relatively quiet compared to other gaming rigs. Even my Imac wasn't going full bore while playing SC2.

I doubt everybody else who is playing sc2 has their system's fan going on at full blast while playing the game.

Can other m17x owners with sc2 installed chime in? Love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

 

I do have SC2, and it's pretty normal fans going full blast during MOST 3d games. Don't forget the fact that these are high performance rigs, and will require much cooling than your imac or whatever you got. I personally don't mind it going full blast, it just means the bios are working well.

 

Yep my fans do kick in to around 3k rpm a little higher sometimes when playing games like SC2. The fans in the M17x would definitely have to work much more harder as you have the settings cranked up way more higher than on the IMAC. However you can't really compare this machine with the IMAC, totally different in every sense. Fan speeds around the 3k rpm are loud but not too bad, once you start hitting the 4k rpms then you will seriously feel like your in a fighter jet plane LOL .
If you really want to lower fan noise then you will have to do the cooling mods. Eg replace the cooling pads and thermal paste on the GPUs and CPU.

Also for the WC3 resolution settings. I've never seen it support any higher resolutions on wide screen monitors. 1600X900 or so seems to be the max unless you try editing the reso manually or something. Also the fans are super quiet when playing any WC3 frozen throne games.

If you want you can use hwinfo32 and click the sensors tab and post up a pic of it while your running SC2. Then we can gauge how fast your fans are spinning. They should be spinning within specifications though.

Cheers.

 

Wc3 is fairly old game. As in over 8 years old. I am surprised it even supports 1600x900.

I play SC2 and WoW quite a bit. The fans rev up a notch when playing but they only jump up to at most 50% of max speed. Nothing like what they do when running a benchmark or Furmark. Temperatures stay pretty low too... mid 60's C or lower... but up to 75 C when running a benchmark (which still isnt very high). When gaming, the noise is only barely audible when my headset is on.

I have my graphics settings on Ultra but I have vsync enabled and triple buffering turned on. With vsync capping the framerate to 60, the machine is spared a little from trying to run all-out the whole time.