Heat of G200 ???

[ccoltas]

A system at work got a jolt and the screen went garbled. Rebooted and it was ok. Couple days later, the PC was totally dead. Swapped the power supply and it worked again. Now the screen went garbled again. Worried I can't figure out what is defective. Is it the video card or the motherboard?

How do I trouble shoot it?

Also, how hot should the heat sink be on the Matrox G200?? Its seems really hot, uncomfortable to touch. I have found that this is fairly common, but how common is it? I thought the rather high heat of the G200 meant that it was defective or the motherboard was damaged or one or both were damaged causing the highers heat temps.

Any ideas????????????

thanx

[Randy Simons]

My G200 got pretty hot as well. In fact, in summertime it got too hot and caused my system to freeze. A simlpe 486-fan solved all those problems.

[edit]
Hehe, it got so hot that my system froze, now how about that paradox?
[/edit]

[Greebe]

Same here... hot chip... mine is a Millennium G200 (SGRAM) and put a vannilla G400 HS on mine to keep it cool during the summer months.

[ccoltas]

Fair enough. Thats about all I needed to know. So the heat of the G200 alone isn't something that should lead me to believe something is broken??

I still need to find out why the screen goes garbled. I suspect its still possibley the video card, the motherboard or both. I-yi yi!!

[Greebe]

After the system hasn't been running for awhile (say overnight) when first powering up does it still garble?

If not then I'd say you have a case ventilation issue, if it does then it could be that the card possibly isn't in the slot fully, defective or another issue possibly related to MB and or it's settings/drivers

[ccoltas]

The PC has been fine for 3 years. Its only just done this recently after getting what we strongly suspect is an ac jolt. My coworker was fiddling with some ac and he felt a spark go from his arm into the monitor. The problem is probably going to prove intermittent. The PC worked fine for a day and a half and then one day, the screen went kooky. Its either the video card, the motherboard or memory.

[SteveC]

If you had a PSU go funky on you, then the BIOS on the G200 is probably a bit screwed. Run the Matrox BIOS recovery util on the card and update the BIOS to the latest.

Don't worry about the heat so much though - in the Compaq Deskpros at work we all have G200's (well, apart from me with a G450 ) and they often get too hot to touch but the only problem I've ever seen is a dodgy BIOS

[Greebe]

Guess I should have also mentioned that during the G200's time the product went through a die skrink, where the original G200's were at 350nm and the newer ones were at 250nm. Hence the older cards produced alot more heat.