The cooling fan on my video card is going fast. I currently have a ECS NGT520C-1GQK-F GeForce GT 520 (Fermi) 1GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card. It's served me well. What things should I look for in the new card? I use the computer a lot for poser and also luxrenderer.

Also what damage am I doing to the rest of my computer if I keep using this one as is, until I get a new one?

As much on-board memory as you can afford, cause lack of it is a real killer with all these new GPU-based rendering products.

I have a 3gig DDR5 GeForce 650 Ti Boost that runs Cycles really well (so I'm assuming it'll run Luxrender if you use the gpu option). It wasn't very expensive either.

Laurie

The cooling fan on my video card is going fast. I currently have a ECS NGT520C-1GQK-F GeForce GT 520 (Fermi) 1GB 64-Bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card. It's served me well. What things should I look for in the new card? I use the computer a lot for poser and also luxrenderer.

Also what damage am I doing to the rest of my computer if I keep using this one as is, until I get a new one?

Hi there I would recommend to re-apply with good thermal paste,if you want to use yours existing card for time being,I've used on my GTX580Ti Shin-Etsu X23-7783D and with this paste my temperatures drops to low 60's during the V-RAY or any other GPU based rendering,with stock paste my temps has been high as 90C and seen too 100C,which has pointed out,my paste has been pretty old,but I've bought this card I think 2 years ago...

If you are rendering lots in Luxrender or any other OpenCL renderer then I would go with ATI/AMD R9 280X or 290X,those cards are unbeatable in OpenCL,although new GTX970 or GTX980 are bit better but they cost two or three times more than R9-2XX,I've seen R9-290X for £140 few days ago which I bought straight away,but usual price for them is around £200-£250(in US I've seen them for around 250USD),R9-280X is cheaper and is equipped with 3GB VRAM which should be enough,but for my needs I need 4GB VRAM although would go rather with 8GB R9-290X,but they cost around 350-450GBP

But as above if you are using yours card in GPU based SW then I would go with biggest VRAM as you can,but this depends on more factors,how big scene are yours etc,in most cases 4GB VRAM is enough and sometimes 3GB is enough too

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

You aren't doing any damage to the rest of computer running as it is.  The fan may just be dirty, so give it a shot of air (canned or otherwise) and see if that helps. I'm cheap, so if the card was performing well, I'd replace the fan, myself if I could get one for less than $10.  Measure the one that's there and see if you can find one that will fit online...

I think I phrased that poorly. My fan is going bad quickly. It barely turns and the temp gets up to the 190s by the time the computer boots. I saw it at 220 last night in the time it took to boot the computer and type that message. This is Fahrenheit btw. 

I don't know if I can figure out how to replace the fan but I'll look. The card worked well for me. Otherwise I'll look into the other suggestions. Thank you all.

I hope that's Fahrenheit!  :D

That's HOT;  Did the heat sink fall off? I have a Radeon card, but it's running at 32 C right now, which is below 100 F. If I spin the Poser view around I can get it up to 40 C. However, my office is pretty chilly this time of year...

I think I phrased that poorly. My fan is going bad quickly. It barely turns and the temp gets up to the 190s by the time the computer boots. I saw it at 220 last night in the time it took to boot the computer and type that message. This is Fahrenheit btw. 

I don't know if I can figure out how to replace the fan but I'll look. The card worked well for me. Otherwise I'll look into the other suggestions. Thank you all.

Hi there 220F(104C) is too much,highest temps what I've seen on my GPU has been 100C when my paste went out or has dried,I've replaced the paste and GPU has went during the render to low 60's

Did you tried to adjust the fans via Expertool from Gainward or MSI Afterburner? There you can adjust the curve of the GPU fans

And fan replacement shouldn't cost more than few $,please have look on this and should be pretty easy,just measure the diameter of the fan 

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/graphics-card-fan

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

The Fan all but stopped spinning. When I took it out, the fan was warmer than the rest of the card. I've ordered a new fan. Unfortunately the only ones inthe size I need can take up to 15 days to ship. Two weeks without poser. How will I survive?at least I have a tablet for getting on line.

Note that an NVIDIA GT 740 with 4GB of Ram is right around $100. 

The Fan all but stopped spinning. When I took it out, the fan was warmer than the rest of the card. I've ordered a new fan. Unfortunately the only ones inthe size I need can take up to 15 days to ship. Two weeks without poser. How will I survive?at least I have a tablet for getting on line.

Hi there What is fan size ?

I would check if heatsink is in contact with chip/GPU and check if fan is freely spinning etc But from yours report seems yours fan is damaged 

Thanks,Jura