nvidia: help keep my e1705 alive

I have an Inspiron E1705 which I love -- super fast and stable machine, even today.

Two years ago the onboard (nvidia) graphics card baked itself into video frenzy. A quick session in my kitchen oven fixed it. Until a few months ago. Same problem, video issues attributed to solder joints failing, only this time the oven didn't fix it.

I just picked up an FX1500 on ebay without realizing it was an nvidia card -- duh. 256MB RAM tho so it should drive my 17" display handily. I am worried, however, that I am not going to get a lot of life out of this card... And am looking for a solution.

Short of a laptop cooler (which I'm not sure would even help in this case, given that nvidia had a class-action lawsuit filed against them for, among other things, the exact issue I am describing), can anyone suggest some ways to keep this video card extra cool and extend its life? Any way to under clock it? Undervolt it? Install some sort of active cooling? Ideas would be most welcome.

Thanks.

 

The solution? Don't buy an Nvidia chip from the Napa/Santa Rosa time period. Get an ATI. The problem is the cheapo substrate filler material in the actual GPU die that causes the meltdown issue.

 

Thanks. Funny, I was in Santa Rosa/Petaluma during that time, and was always an nvidia fan because they were right down the street.

Would sufficient cooling help at all? The FX is a dual heat pipe setup vs the single of the 7900 in there now... Any chance the FX will live healthier with the added cooling, or am I simply SOL?

 

Well IIRC the temperature at which the expanding/contracting started at was between 60 and 70C. Even my Vostro 1500's 8600M GT gets to like 72C under max load, even with that uber heatpipe. Maybe see if you can do a heatpipe mod (what I did for my ASUS G71GX was put VRAM heatsinks and thermal epoxy'd them onto the heatpipes for more passive cooling).