how to turn off vga adapter

[Faceman]

Hi,

the hot weather (and my poor cooling systems), which has formerly caused major problems with my HDs and my CPU, has now attacked my (already withered) graphics adapter.
When I leave my PC turned on long enough it overheats leaving me with a nasty error message and the problem that I have to wait for about an hour to be able to turn my PC back on.
As I tend to leave my PC on 24/7 this gets rather ugly and I'm seriously afraid of permanently damaging my graphics adapter.

Is there any possibility to have the VGA adapter turn off or go to standby mode like the monitor or the HDs?

I'm running a Gforce 4200Ti on a AthlonXP2000 WinXP system.

thx for the help

[andrewas]

There are some power management features, but I dont think you can turn off the graphics card. It goes into Standby mode when the monitor turns off anyway, nothing to display, no calculations to be done.

Besides, your attacking the symptom, not the problem. You need to improve cooling in your case. Extra fans would be one way, improving airflow (round ata-80 cables, tieing other cables out of the way, clearing vents etc) would also help.

If its bad enough that you need more than that, you could consider liquid cooling which moves heat faster, but is expensive. And be very careful installing it, one leak and you fry everything.

[Bruce The Aussie]

like andrewas said, its probably better jsut to get adiquat cooling. although it could be a bit pricey to go for the more expensize options (like water cooling which is about £110-£150) it'll be worth it in the long run, aka not having to buy a new motherboard and processor becuase you melted your last one. belive me, i've tried it. cost a bout £200 to replace. and if you graphics card melts that'll cost. in the short term, unil you get better cooling you could try taking the side off your case and not leaving it on so long. unfotunatly i don't belive there is a way too turn off your graphics card without unplugging it.

[Faceman]

thx for the answers

I have already opened my case and still - phew
I HAVE considered better cooling but I'm rather short on money now so I needed an "until I get my paycheck next month" solution

[Bruce The Aussie]

if you've got a desk fan, you can leave the case open and turn the fan into it. i usually do this to remove dust but it does cool it. i did this once when i shoved my brothers geeforce 4 ti4600 into my machine (a crappy old 1.4ghz that only runs at 1.01, but i love it anyway [img]smile.gif[/img] ) and it was cooled really well.