Heat produced by capture cards

[sunray]

Right now I have 3 PVR-250 encoding cards in my HTPC running Sage 5.04 and I was thinking of replacing them with ATI Theater 650 cards or NVidia DualTV cards. The problem is that my HTPC doesnt have good cooling and I've read that these cards run hot. How much hotter do the ATI and NVidia cards run compared to the PVR-250? Thanks.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by sunray

Right now I have 3 PVR-250 encoding cards in my HTPC running Sage 5.04 and I was thinking of replacing them with ATI Theater 650 cards or NVidia DualTV cards. The problem is that my HTPC doesnt have good cooling and I've read that these cards run hot. How much hotter do the ATI and NVidia cards run compared to the PVR-250? Thanks.

I don't know, but on a related question, I have a MyHD card which I just disabled the driver for. Does anyone know whether that will decrease the heat it produces.

And for the OP, consider an HD Homerun--external through ethernet.

[m0ng00se30]

Originally Posted by sunray

Right now I have 3 PVR-250 encoding cards in my HTPC running Sage 5.04 and I was thinking of replacing them with ATI Theater 650 cards or NVidia DualTV cards. The problem is that my HTPC doesnt have good cooling and I've read that these cards run hot. How much hotter do the ATI and NVidia cards run compared to the PVR-250? Thanks.

I have no experience with these cards, but I don't see how anything can run hotter than the 250s without melting. I had them running for a long time and the heat they generated was severe especially packed in to adjacent PCI slots. 500s seem to be cooler.

[Menehune]

IIRC, I was getting temps of 120F (on the decoder chip) on my 250 when it were installed in a shuttle case. After burning my finger on the chip, I wasn't comfortable leaving them in the compact shuttle case. I currently have two 250s in an ATX case with a 80mm case fan blowing down on them 24/7. No problems.

My parent's HTPC has a uATX mobo in a desktop (horizontal form factor) case. The case is too hot for my tastes, but if I add any more fans they won't hear anything in the family room. No problems (yet) with the restricted airflow in the uATX case. Dad loves home improvement shows and the HTPC is on 24/7.

[sunray]

Thanks for your help guys. I can't remember where but I've read that the older PVR-250s ran hotter than the new ones. Since I bought my PVR-250's near the end of their production run I wonder if I have some of the cooler running ones. M0ng00se30 and Menehune do you know if your PVR-250s were older or new ones?

[PGPfan]

It's easy to determine if you have an older one or newer one. All you have to do is look for a heatsink. If you have a heatsink on your 250 it is an older one, if not it's newer.

My 250 (which I don't use anymore) is the older style with the heatsink.

-PGPfan

[m0ng00se30]

Originally Posted by sunray

Thanks for your help guys. I can't remember where but I've read that the older PVR-250s ran hotter than the new ones. Since I bought my PVR-250's near the end of their production run I wonder if I have some of the cooler running ones. M0ng00se30 and Menehune do you know if your PVR-250s were older or new ones?

SunRay... mine were the newer "cooler" version. Now let me say this about them... they ran in some tight confined places for a year at temps that I thought would DESTROY them, but they survived and worked flawlessly. I've let people borrow them for testing and such, and they still work great! So I can't complain about the 250s, but if you an provide a little extra cooling for them it wouldn't hurt at all!