Sufficient default fan cooling for GTX 285?

[JWiegley]

Does it actually require x8, to operate, or do you need it to be operating at x8 speeds? Those are two different things; many cards will continue to function, just at the lower speed.

That's a great point. Even x4 exceeds the maximum throughput I would ever see out of the RAID-0 configuration I'm running. I'll move the RAID up to slot 1 and remove the bracket so that the 285 can breathe better.

 

[Jarman74]

On the Mac side, if I'm doing lots of filesystem activity on the RAID, the GTX 285 can overheat and lockup the machine. This even happens when the 285 is doing nothing at all, just sitting at non-moving desktop.

This month I experienced similar issues, but my Mac didn't freeze: it rebooted out of the blue. System logs didn't show anything at all

The Mac Pro itself says the ambient temp is 31C and its running the Expansion Slots exhaust fan at around 1200rpm right now (the fastest fan in the whole box).

The solution I have just found is setting the CPU/mem minimum fan speed at 600rpm (ambient temp: 21C) with smcFanControl. Maybe this piece of information will be helpful to somebody else.

 

[alphaod]

Sadly, I don't have that option. The RocketRAID needs PCI x8 or x16, and the top two slots in the Mac Pro are x4.

I believe the internal bus on the RocketRAID only runs on x4, so moving to a x4 slot shouldn't be an issue. Besides unless your drives are all 200 MB/s SSDs I wouldn't worry too much.

It just needs the pin layout on the x8 slot, not the extra lanes.

 

[tecton]

I have a gtx285 mac version in slot 1.

I've never had any problems.

I run windows 7-64 and steam games, L4Dead, Arkham Asylum etc. No problems, its very quiet even under quite stressful games.

Resident Evil 5 runs at about 110fps.
I would recommend this card.

 

[alam]

np at all
i have gtx 285 mac and i've played crysis, fallout 3, half life 2,ep1,ep2, the sims 3, red alert 3, timeshift and alot more games with np at all
and i dont have any of those fan kits
go for it u wont regret it

 

[Unique Visuals]

I have zero problems with mine. See sig for info