Overcooling a GPU possible? Cause of instability?

Well, I came up with an lets call it innovative method of laptop cooling... in japan we have these things called air cleaners.. as the name states they clean air.. mine made for 36 tatami(648 square feet) and the air blows out the top... chilly air may i add... so i set it to turbo... tossed my vostro 1500 on it ( t7100 @ 1.8Ghz, 1gb ram(btw can i upgrade with canadian ram on japanese notebook?), 8600m GT(No OC),169.04 drivers, windows xp)

I started up gta sa and saw a rapid drop in temperature (max settings, antialias set at 3, draw distance at half and framelimiter off 1440 by 900 res) from 64 degrees C to 32 degrees C. and then the game began to crash... is the temperature too low causing the crash? is that even possible?

I then decided to see what temp it holds with msn, yahoo gadgets, rocket dock, firefox etc... you get the picture... it dropped to 27 and decided to post before i continue heavy cooling...as in ..if it would be harmful to system to run it at low temps.. currently holding 31 degrees with aircleaner set at minimum any potential for damage?

after responses may be willing to test other games upon installation...

THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!

Note:

Japanese airconditioners/cleaners do not send out moisture like north american ones

 

I think if it gets "too" cool it'll start to form moisture. That might be the causing issue.

 

I doubt the drop in temperature is the cause, you would have to go well below 0°C to start noticing problems with cooling. If you say no moisture is there... are the vents clean? Maybe you've blown some dust inside which may be the source of your problem.

 

CPUs / GPUs can run at -196 celcuis , (Liquid nitrogen) So im sure that 32 celcius is perfectly fine. More likley thats its moisture is the culprit.

 

89 degrees fahrenheit is NOT low enough to even begin to accumulate condensation.

0c is the temperature when water begins to freeze, and at that temp it may start accumulating condensation but there's no chance that you would get it this low without a chemical, or substance like nitrogen.

If you were to place pc components in a container and removed all the humidity, you could run the pc at under -150c and it still wouldn't have problems.

 

Like the posters above stated, at 32 C there is no way it will start condensate, in fact with a laptop cooler and my internal fan, I can make my CPU hit 20 C, (while Idle of course) with ambient temperature at 16 C. I suggest trying out other games and see if they crashes, it could be a bad installation of GTA:SA. Also, can you post a picture of your (the) "Air Cleaner", I am really curious and want to see what it looks like. =P

 

if your talking about taking moisture out of the air and turning it into a liquid, you don't need to be at 0 degrees for this to happen. think about it.

-chem 2 student

 

Yes... but at 32celcius, standard pressure.. not quite possible.

-basic chem in high school

 

Doesn't typical air cleaner suck out the moisture from the air anyways, or is that another device I am thinking of.

 

I was thinking of those which ionize air... no idea.. we would like some pictures of it..

 

Depends on the relative humidity around the laptop, I don't believe 32 C can lower that limit enough to condensate.

-Last Year Geog Student.

 

If the place were you are is too humid and your air cleaner or cooler can decrease drastically the temperature then you may create moisture if the cooling device started after the components were too hot. If the cooling system starts at the same time as the components warm up then there should be no problem.

 

Hmm.. i rethought of what i said... it might condensate, but not on the gpu itself but rather on anywhere that is near the blower of the cooler... if u have a thermostat, check how many celcius issit at the output of the blower..

So what you have might not be a gpu overcooling problem.. can be other parts as well.

 

This would be a fallacy. what your saying sounds totally plausible, but realistically is not the key trigger. The core electric components will not be drastically (not even minutely) affected by this decrease in temperature. The cooling is still taking place fairly slowly (over the course of a few minutes). This is in no way shock cooling, and so we're not physically affecting the electronic components.

 

The moisture could be coming from the air cooler itself, depending on how it works. Perhaps the way it cools is by combining cold water with the air, thus cooling it. Water has a very high heat capacity than air, and small water droplets suspended in the air would cool a space much faster than just cold air.

I have operated my computer outdoors when it was 34 F, and the cpu was around 20 celsius, along with the gpu. I ran 3dmark and the gpu went up to around 30 C, there was no system instability whatsoever, and I also have a vostro 1500.

 

Run it without the air cleaner. I know its obvious and someone probably mentioned it already... but just in case.

 

THANKS FOR THE POSTS!!!

well I believe this post shall answer everybody's questions

For the person who wanted to a picture ... I will post one a little later... after i can get my phone to charge to take the picture ..

 

no bad installation.. was playing it before cooling no issues.. but here are the pics I hope i resized them small enough ... sry about quality

 

Well the as it was suggested before, the outside of the notebook might have condensation..., but thats almost like an AC O_O

 

japanese AC


and i question the condensation as air cleaners use a series of filters to get rid of smell etc which they also filter moisture out of the air... and in a japanese winter there aint any moisture to to filter out anyways

 

Yes I know what an AC looks like, I have one like that at home too...(HK)...-.- you don't just get them in Japan you know?

I am just saying that, your air purifier (proper name) is large enough to be a small AC

 

weird.. in japan its air cleaner

so a general question to everyone .. Is it safe now to toss my laptop on it?

 

well unless there is something that you have omitted to tell us. there isn't a problem with it running cold.

 

my mom says my room is messy .... ok thanmks for the posts btw would crysis run on my system?

 

^^what system is it?

 

t7100 1.8 ghz
8600m GT 256mb DDR2
1 Gb Ram ( planning on upping it possible to use ram from canada in a japanese computer???)

and thats about it

 

1024 x 640, or 765, at all medium setting. You will get around 20-30 FPS, and may be lower later at the end of the game.

 

Or all high except shaders on medium and shadows on low. Check out the benchmarks in my signature for more information.

 

Tuning shader down really kills the game, besides 8600m GT is a GT because of it's extra shader power, I did turn everything else down but leave shader @ high.

 

so i guess its a yes for working even without OC.. are you sure my processor can handle it?