Video card fan failures: How common"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Doug Warner
  • Start date Start date
D

Doug Warner

Came into room, system running, screen dark. Reset, POST screen
characters have blotches of different color.
I opened the system to reseat my ATI radeon 9800 Pro, and fin that
it's almost too hot to touch.,

Cause: Fan is jammed solid I removed, disassembled, and lubed it,
and re-greased the heat sink while I was at it. It's working OK now.
I'm suprised these boards don't have thermal monitoring, with alarms
in the case of fan slowdown/failure.
 
Doug said:
Came into room, system running, screen dark. Reset, POST screen
characters have blotches of different color.
I opened the system to reseat my ATI radeon 9800 Pro, and fin that
it's almost too hot to touch.,

Cause: Fan is jammed solid I removed, disassembled, and lubed it,
and re-greased the heat sink while I was at it. It's working OK now.
I'm suprised these boards don't have thermal monitoring, with alarms
in the case of fan slowdown/failure.
Click to expand...

I wonder about fan reliability, too. The fan on my Asus Extreme
N6600GT makes some noise, although it seems to work. The chip monitor
software that came with it says that it runs at around 52° C, and it's
set to shut it down at 127° C. It has never gone about 63° C or so
during the toughest came work, and it's ten degrees cooler the rest of
the time. But I don't know if it would stay cool without the fan
running. I hope it's a double-ball-bearing fan.
 
....
I wonder about fan reliability, too.
Click to expand...

I just mentioned that in conversation with someone. He was talking
about how the first control systems in public (electricity) service
buildings were a little short on things like feedback. I just mentioned
that it's not much different nowadays.

Would be nice to know whether the fans are running, and to be able to
set shut down temperatures.

I suppose most consumers cannot service a fan and therefore would just
as soon replace the damaged device.
 
Doug said:
Came into room, system running, screen dark. Reset, POST screen
characters have blotches of different color.
I opened the system to reseat my ATI radeon 9800 Pro, and fin that
it's almost too hot to touch.,

Cause: Fan is jammed solid I removed, disassembled, and lubed it,
and re-greased the heat sink while I was at it. It's working OK now.
I'm suprised these boards don't have thermal monitoring, with alarms
in the case of fan slowdown/failure.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I have a 9800 Pro also and I'll keep an eye out
for fan failure.

Bob
 
My Nvidia FX5900 has that feature. Video card fan failure has become a major
problem lately.I believe it's connected to variable speed fans. They just
don't hold up.


Came into room, system running, screen dark. Reset, POST screen
characters have blotches of different color.
I opened the system to reseat my ATI radeon 9800 Pro, and fin that
it's almost too hot to touch.,

Cause: Fan is jammed solid I removed, disassembled, and lubed it,
and re-greased the heat sink while I was at it. It's working OK now.
I'm suprised these boards don't have thermal monitoring, with alarms
in the case of fan slowdown/failure.
 
Cause: Fan is jammed solid I removed, disassembled, and lubed it,
and re-greased the heat sink while I was at it. It's working OK now.
I'm suprised these boards don't have thermal monitoring, with alarms
in the case of fan slowdown/failure.
Click to expand...

I had an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 which suffered from a fan failure.

I replaced the fan and it ran fine for a month or so, before the 2nd
fan also failed.

I'm assuming ther is some fault with the card itself that is causing
the fans to fail.

OTOH, its possible that the 2nd fan wasn't compatible. Its DC 12V
0.09.

I just bought a fan that would fit, and didn't pay too much attention
to voltage/wattage requirements.
 
I had an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 which suffered from a fan failure.

I replaced the fan and it ran fine for a month or so, before the 2nd
fan also failed.

I'm assuming ther is some fault with the card itself that is causing
the fans to fail.
Click to expand...
My fan was just stuck, I could turn it, but it would not spin freely
when pushed. The lube in the plain oilite bearing was dried up, with
black deposits on the steel rotor shaft.

I removed the fan. pulled a sticker/seal off the back, and pried off
the split plastic retaining ring. I cleaned the shaft, and the
bearing with some cotton string wetted with alcohol. After that, I
lubed it with some Tri-Flow, a spray lube that I've been using on
plain bearing motors for years now, and never had to re-open one.
I just wish they had used a ball bearing fan, and included monitoring.
At least, during POST, the card's BIOS should have displayed a fan
failure alert.
 
That's why I don't touch graphics cards with fans on, anymore.

Nowadays all my cards are fanless, which makes the cards quieter and
safer since they can't overheat.

// Owner of a fanless 6600
 
EdwardH said:
That's why I don't touch graphics cards with fans on, anymore.

Nowadays all my cards are fanless, which makes the cards quieter and
safer since they can't overheat.
Click to expand...

But don't all high-performance cards require fans? And don't fanless
cards get a lot hotter than they need to, reducing their life
expectancy?
 
Mxsmanic said:
But don't all high-performance cards require fans? And don't fanless
cards get a lot hotter than they need to, reducing their life
expectancy?
Click to expand...

Not if you measure life expectancy by how long it is till the fan dies and
the card cooks itself ;)
 
EdwardH said:
That's why I don't touch graphics cards with fans on, anymore.

Nowadays all my cards are fanless, which makes the cards quieter and
safer since they can't overheat.

// Owner of a fanless 6600
Click to expand...

I use a Zalman heatpipe on my 9600XT based card. I don't like
proprietary fans on graphics cards. I wouldn't mind if the manufacturers
would just put a quiet 80mm standard sized fan on the cards, that way I
could just replace it when it died without having to screw around so much.

Ari

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transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
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