Any time I do space missions, (Empire Defense comes to mind) my video card's fans start spinning so fast I think my whole computer is about to explode. The speed of the fans seem dependant on where the camera is facing in space, but I can't pin down what exactly is causing the problem. I've tried turning down every setting I can and it changes nothing.

I have a Radeon HD 4890 with ATI CCC 12.6 drivers (as recommended by the official ATI website).

Any clues as to why this is happening, and what I can do to fix it? I've stopped playing because I feel like the game is going to damage my computer.

STO makes fukll use of all the hardware on your video card; therefore the card will run hotter and as a result, your fan (working as designed) will increase rotational speed to help cool the card.

If you have a temp monitoring program, and are concerned, just run it and look at the peak temp when you're in STO and the fan is ramoing up - and as long as it's still in the proper range you have nothing to worry about.

You can also activate vertical synch in game so that the video card doesn't generate more frames than the Hz rating of your monitor; or set it manually using the /maxfps command on the chatline in game.

For example if your monitors vert. synch is 60 Hz you'd type: /maxfps 60
and hit the Enter key.

Other tha n that, you can try lowering your video settings, but again, as long as your video card under load isn't exceeding the max operational temperature range with the fan going; you have nothing to worry about.

Thanks for the reply. I'll need to re-download a temp monitoring program. I used to have one but I never needed it because I rarely had any reason to suspect anything was overheating.

I just looked up a few videos on YouTube, and I think it's just that the 4890's fan is like a fracking jet engine under load, and only STO seems to push it over 50% (where the fan really has to kick in). Even games like Deus Ex: HR, Skyrim, and Dishonored don't push the card as hard as STO does.