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Hardware

Problem Fans on Video Cards? 49

Posted by Cliff from the more-airflow-needed dept.
MobyDisk asks: "Both myself and my roommate have experienced problems with unreliable fans on video cards, leading to fried video chips. Most cards don't have full-size 12V fans, even though they put out a lot of heat. I've resorted to replacing the fans with cheap upgrades. A search for '"video card fan' on Google reveals lots examples of this problem as well as fan upgrade kits. I want to know how common this problem is. Have other readers experienced problems with video card fans? Should video card manufacturers start using better fans for reliability? Or do they just want us to upgrade next year when the fan dies?"
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Problem Fans on Video Cards? More

Problem Fans on Video Cards?

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  • Hey! (Score:3, Funny)

    by floydigus ( 415917 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:02PM (#4367557)
    I'm a fan of video cards and I'm very reliable, thank you.

  • Considering how fast new chipsets come out (Score:3, Interesting)

    by questionlp ( 58365 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:04PM (#4367570) Homepage
    Taking a look at the video chipset development cycle... new chips (be it a brand new architecture or an extension to an existing high-end chip) come out every 8-12 months (although nVidia used to be a lot more aggressive with a 6-8 month cycle). With such a fast dev cycle, they think that gamers that like to hot-rod their machines and have the latest and greatest will always upgrade soon after the temporary king of the hill is released. Now, it's the ATI 9700 Pro... in a couple of months, it will be the nVidia NV30, etc.

    With that... they probably don't really care of the fans fail after a year since they probably want you to upgrade by then anyway.

    But for those without a budget to upgrade every 8-12 months... we may be out of luck since new cards usually mean different cooling solutions (due to die size, heat production, the heatsink mount hole positions, etc.) and some of the aftermarket stuff don't quite cut it.

    One solution might be to get one of those large coolers that attach to where the PCI/AGP cards screw holes are and blow right at the video card (and other cards). That way, even if the fan dies, there is still some airflow getting through the heatsink. It's not a pretty solution, but it's more like a cast than a band-aid :)

  • nVidia 4600 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:14PM (#4367637) Journal
    My roomie had a fan's bearings get noisy after only a month of use. I am assuming that the fan will fail within the year.

    Maybe a new cooling solution for computers needs to be implemented. Having a fan for the power supply, processor, GPU, hard drives, southbridge, and basic system fans can get very noisy. Especially if two (or more) of the fans resonate. I think it is time for a standard cooling system. Maybe each piece of hardware that needs cooling should come with a universal bracket that hooks to industry standard water cooling solutions or something.

    Just random thoughts.

    • Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kevin Stevens ( 227724 )
      This is where watercooling can reap benefits, and could also save money. With a watercooling system the only moving part would be a waterpump. This pump would be the only mechanical point of failure. This would lead to quieter, cooler systems. Waterpumps do not need to spin at high rpm's in high heat environments which also make them more reliable. Instead of adding more fans, all you need to add are more waterblocks over your system. If Oem's or large manufacturers started to develop products based on watercooling, I bet waterblock and radiator prices would drop to the point where they are only marginally more expensive than fan systems, especially as components such as disk drives, north and south bridge chips, graphics cards, and power supplies are requiring more cooling power. When you also consider that most watercooling solutions on the market today are designed for hardcore overclocking, and you could use much smaller (and cheaper) radiators and pumps, watercooling could become integrated into mainstream PC's. I think most of the resistance stems from a vision of water leaks ruining all of your hardware. But a properly sealed system should have a much smaller rate of failure than a five fan system whirring at 4,000 rpm's each whose noise drives you crazy... I guess that giant circular copper finned heatsink with the fan on top does look like something out of a sci-fi movie, but I would much rather have piece of mind(somewhat) and glow in the dark cooling tubes running through my system...

      • Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by terpia ( 28218 )
        This is why watercooling is stupid. The contingent of people using it right now are telling everyone that it's more reliable and much better than aircooling. They might as well be linux zealots spouting off about how ready linux is for the desktop. The simple fact is that at this point in time, watercooling is only viable and reliable on a comsumre PC if you can babysit your system and are familiar enough with the internal components to do something when one begins to fail. Mom and Pop don't need it. When you water cool, you are using high quality parts no? Why not just pop off the OEM video card fan and use a high quality aftermarket one. You'll experience about the same failure rate as watercooling then. If the fan on your video card dies, only your video board dies. If the wterpump dies in a water-cooled setup - Everything Dies.

        • Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:3, Interesting)

          by delus10n0 ( 524126 )
          If the wterpump dies in a water-cooled setup - Everything Dies.

          That's only if you're a moron and don't have some sort of auto shutdown present on your system. Either through software, such as motherboard monitor, or through hardware.. though I haven't seen too many hardware devices for this task. I just rely on Motherboard Monitor. If my CPU or GPU gets too hot, it just shuts down immediately.

          Also, if you're extremely paranoid, no one's stopping you from running two smaller watercooling pumps. I've seen a professional watercooling kit sold that had two pumps inside of a tank, and one would take over should the other fail. Pretty slick.
          • And when you get a hole in a tube...

            might as well toss your computer in a pool.

            • Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:3, Informative)

              by delus10n0 ( 524126 )
              That's why you use DISTILLED WATER, which is a poor conductor of electricity, especially compared to regular water.

              And why would your tubing get a hole? Are you mixing acid in with your water? Sheesh.

              If a watercooling system is built/designed well, it will last a long while without maintenance of any kind.
              • use DISTILLED WATER

                pure distilled water would be good. But the moment it touches you pc components its gets contermintated with all the dust that collected in your pc. It becomes a conductor.

                Bye bye electronics. ... you could use special oil....

                Although i heard some stories of people dropping a soda (accidentally) in their pc. After cleanup they lived happely ever after.
                • My sister was using the running computer as a coffe table and spilled a glass of milk down the back. It bugged out and reset, but after draining the case into the sink it worked fine. Of course that is different then spraying the entire inside with water.
          • Yeah, why don't you read the comment?


            The parent was advocating/implying that watercooling is ready for the masses. However I highly doubt that Mom and Pop are able to configure MoboMon, or even leave it alone if it came preconfigured. Water cooling is not yet ready for integration by OEMs. That's the point. And I didn't even have to call you a name. Kinda like the fact that Linux really isn't ready for the consumer desktop, but it's good for those who *can* use it.

            • However I highly doubt that Mom and Pop are able to configure MoboMon, or even leave it alone if it came preconfigured.

              This would be where a hardware solution would work perfectly. Someone just needs to come up with one (if there isn't one already; I just don't know of any off-hand.)

              Also, the things you point out about water cooling could just as easily apply to air cooling. Does mom and pop know that they should be cleaning out their PC's case after xxx hours of usage? Or how to replace a defective fan?

              If someone put together a well-built, well-designed watercooling system (perhaps already pre-installed in a case?) along with proper maintenance instructions, it would be ready for OEM use.

              The only setup I've seen so far like this would be the Koolance cases. They come with all the equipment/tubing/etc. run for you. Just has a waterblock taped to the side of the case. You fill the system, install your hardware, attach the waterblock (same as a regular heatsink), and off you go. I believe the Koolance even has overheat protection built in (which will kill power to the system if it reaches a certain temp.)
              • If you plan out your water cooling setup properly, you should have no problem. I have been running a water cooling setup for about two years, with out any problems on my twin PIIIZeon setup. I use good "Fuel" grade black silicone with copper core tubing. To make it look nice I put an automotive fake sliver wire/hose wrap on it, it reflects the cold cat lights nicely. :)

                Also I have never seen a water cooling system fail with proper maintenance. I made my one water jacket for the CPU's, out of lexan and silicon and a two part epoxy. Bought the cool lance system for the geforce 2 video card, and three of the HD coolers.

                Also you should note that water will move on its own through thermodynamics, and will cool better with out power then an air cooled system, where your fans fail. My system has 2 pumps, one pushes up and one pulls down after going through every thing. It has never failed me yet.
      • Actually, there is also a large fan on the radiator in nearly ever case. A large fan at a low RPM can usually do the job well so noise isn't an issue, but if that fan fails the radiator won't be doing nearly as good a job as it had been, and you could be in danger of cooking some components.

        I really don't think this is viable for consumer systems. It makes it much more difficult to replace a component. Most people won't have any idea if their water cooling system goes bad until it's too late. How many times has a fan gone bad without your noticing? A dying fan certainly makes it's presence known. There are inline flow meters that can sound an alarm if flow falls too much, but I'm not so sure I trust them. Besides, who wants to be bothered to check the coolant in their computer ever so often?
  • Yeah I had the fan on my video card start making clunking sounds and burn out after about 3-4 months. So I just wired and mounted a nice 12 volt high speed fan, works great, no noise and I know my vid card is safe.

  • Diamond TNT (Score:1, Informative)

    by schotty ( 519567 )
    I bought a Diamond TNT V550 the week it came out and last February the fan finally died. I bought a socket 7 fan/heatsink and thermal glued it to the GPU. It works BETTER now with the extra cooling than when the crummy original was still good. Proves that proper cooling helps.

  • how about no fans? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nocent ( 71113 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:29PM (#4367741)
    For your next video card, how about considering getting one without fans that is built to function with the heatsink only. Unless you plan to overclock it, you won't need a fan which reduces the overall noise level of your box and eliminates a potential point of failure. There are definitely some Geforce 2 MXs and Geforce 4s(not sure if they are MX) out there that come fanless.
    • my GF2MX PCI is not only fanless, it's also sinkless ;)
      It's not a great gaming card, but it runs some HW acceleration, and frankly, my processor speed is the one which lags behind. The card is clocked something like 175Mhz for core and 143 for memory. I've pushed memory to 160, but it starts to show lots of glitches (no hangs however). Ventilation is nonexistant, and I haven't touched it ;)
  • Should video card manufacturers start using better fans for reliability? Or do they just want us to upgrade next year when the fan dies?

    Yes, and yes.

    Last Christmas I purchased a GeForce 3 Ti500 for my girlfriend. about 3 months ago, the fan basically stopped spinning -- actually it spins about 10 rpm, so slow that I can watch it turn, which is as good as stopped in thie case. I am glad that VisionTek is dying; this is the second card of theirs that I have (the first Ti500 was DOA; this was the replacement) and it is by far the worst experience I have ever had with any manufacturer. From now on I will stick with someone like Abit or Asus, who actually have experience making components like these -- though I recently bought a Gainward GeForce 4 4200 128 meg ViVo that, so far, has been pretty flawless. Anyhow, I guess it's just a crapshoot.

  • quietpc (Score:4, Informative)

    by God_Retired ( 44721 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:59PM (#4367922)
    I've had pretty good luck with this place [quietpcusa.com]. Quiet and effective. I'm not affiliated with them.
    • My current cooling (from quietpc's UK site and overclockers.co.uk) is:

      - Athlon 1.4: Zalman flower, 92mm fan @ approx 5V, 80mm case fan (right next to the CPU) designed for 12V but connected to the PSU's 5V line
      - Geforce 2 Pro: huge Zalman heatsink (occupies the top PCI slot!), spare 80mm case fan mounted in the general vicinity (again, designed for 12V and running on 5V)
      - Northbridge: Zalman heatsink
      - PSU: the silent 300W one from quietpc

      The whole system seems stable (although it gets rather warm with the case-fans running that slowly), and the noisiest components are the hard disks :-)
  • About a year and a half after I got my Hercules GF2 GTS, the fan on it started spinning slow and making noise. Went to Hurcules's webpage, filled out a form (needs the serial number from the card), and 2 weeks later, I had a new HSF at my door, no cost to me. Link is here [hercules.com].
  • Of course they want you to upgrade in a year when the next wizbang card is out... Plus the fact that most consumers buy almost exclusively on price rather than quality. This is how we end up with the service we get in the airline industry, and Walmart...

    I would love to be able to shop around and find a high quality computer part, but the truth is that the market has made the parts almost indistinguishable except for price, and to get the low price manufacturers are willing to cut EVERY corner, including cheap fans and low quality software drivers.

    People talk about how low quality Windows is and how bad Microsoft is, I haven't had a Windows box crash on me outside of running my development kernel code for years that wasn't directly related to the video driver. And that is not Microsoft code at all. Oh well...

    • Plus the fact that most consumers buy almost exclusively on price rather than quality. This is how we end up with the service we get in the airline industry, and Walmart...

      Wal-Mart doesn't have bad quality. I think, rather, that they have "acceptable" quality. But if you want bad quality, you go to the dollar store. Just about any kitchen trinket you buy there is destined to cause you misery and/or fall apart.

      Wait a second! Maybe dollar stores should sell PC equipment! ;)
  • Your story sounds a lot like mine. I have a Creative Geforce3 card in my system. One day my PC started emitting strange loud noises, very much like a lawnmower :) I couldn't really localize it at first, so I thought it was either the powersupply fan or the CPU fan, perhaps even one of the disks. It didn't really occur to me that the graphics card had a fan too (the card is "inverted", so it's not immediately visible when I open my case)

    The system was still under warranty, so I took it in and they found out it was actually the Geforce3's fan that had failed or was failing. There were already burning marks on the silicon, so I guess I was lucky my entire system didn't go down in flames.

    At the shop they blamed the fan failure on excessive dust build-up, but I didn't really buy that. In any case, they were pretty nice about it and replaced the card, even giving me a Geforce4MX as a temporary solution so they could send the card back to Creative.

    Anyway, from now on I don't leave my system on anymore when I'm not home out of fear it might start a fire. I used to leave it on all the time so I could ssh in from work or wherever I was.
  • We've got a bunch of P4's at work with Nvidia Quattro cards. I think it was the reseller being cheap but out of the 30 or so machines we got, about 10 fried their cards within a year. The screens degraded badly over a period of weeks as the fan couldn't cope with the heat off of the GPU, then they popped.

    Seems like a stupid way to save, what a couple of quid on a fan. The reseller had to replace the boards for us of course...
  • I had a Geforce2 GTS 64mb fan quit on me, and I didn't even know it for a long time. Funny, I ran the card for over a year without the fan, with no problems. Of course, I didn't overclock it.
  • And you're golden. A carefully placed wood screw or two, or a couple of pan-ties [panduiteeg.com] is all you'll likely need to replace your old one.

    Yeah, I'm sure you thought of that too. :-)
  • I have a Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 TV/out (yeah it's old, but hey I need to eat).

    After a couple months, there was a loud rattling noise, a loud squeaking noise, and then silence. Upon investigation, the fan had seized up. The Kyro II heatsink on this card is round, with a special fan embedded down in it to fit between the AGP and the first PCI slot. I had an old fan from an external SCSI enclosure, which I glued onto the skeleton of the old fan. At the same time, I noticed my chipset fan wouldn't turn. I replaced it with another small fan, strapped on with magnet wire. The Kyro II fan died in a few weeks, so I grabbed a Socket 7 fan and wired it on. Still runs, I contacted Hercules and they said they could send me a new fan, but honestly I trust the CPU fan more. It covers a PCI slot, but it's not a problem...yet.
  • I had a Hercules TNT 16mb AGP back in the day and the fan started making a lot of noise and seizing up so i just snipped the wires to it, a week or so later the video card fried... it probably wasnt the best fix

    Also, i had a tnt2 ultra after that and the fan on it seizes up and makes a ton of noise. I didnt clip the wires this time, but i've tried to oil it to make it work and it still spins very slowly. I currently have a gf2 32mb in my computer and the fan hasnt broken on it, *YET*

  • I have two dead cards, both Dell nVidia GeForce 2, which were fried because the fans stopped working. One card has no video at all, while another developed a problem where there are massive vertical lines throughout the display.

    Since I didn't need performace on one of the machines, I replaced one card with a low-end card with no fan.

  • I admin a lab of 8 workstations with Vanta video cards in them. These cards have a serious hardware flaw in them. The heatsink was too small (should really have been a fan) and after about a year, they start to exhibit the following phenomenon.

    You get horizontal ghosting of the image. So if you get a window in the middle of the screen, you can see smudges of the window to either side of the image.
    If you'd not known this, you'd likely think it was the monitor.

    Also, I noticed on a spreadsheet that red turns into this amazing flourescent orange!

    If you take the card out, and remove the two heatsinks, you can quite clearly see the scorch marks.

  • Just oil 'em (Score:2, Informative)

    by klui ( 457783 )
    What perfect timing. I installed a Radeon w/ fan no less than 3-4 months ago and just a week or so ago, the fan started making a moaning/groaning noise cycling several minutes apart.

    I read on Usenet a while back that groaning fan problems can sometimes be solved by removing its backing sticker and oiling the access hole. I performed this procedure for my Radeon's fan and the groaning noise is gone.

  • My nVidia GForce Ultra's fan kept working, but the heatsink/fan combination managed to vibrate itself loose from the card. Toasted it in short order. The replacement was a GForce MX I had lying around. No fan, and does a decent enough job I might not replace it.

  • I have a Inno3D GeForce 2MX and last year the fan on it started making a weird noise. The first time I started the computer each mornign the fan would groan. If I rebooted the noise would quit. Then it started taking two or three reboots.
    Eventually the fan gave out so I rigged up a radio shack fan, now the same thing is happening. Anybody have any ideas what is up with my fan?

  • Big fan, low speed... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2002 @05:22PM (#4376706) Homepage
    I've taken out all the pishy wee 1.5" and 2" fans in my machine (removable drive bays, chipset, CPU and graphics card heatsink), and replaced them *all* with a couple of 4" or 5" fans. They're designed for 12v but I run them off the 5v rail. They're almost silent in operation, and blast a lot of air around the inside of the case. Everything runs nice and cool, and it's blissfully quiet...
  • My video card has been running hot as it is, I lowered the hardware accel to overcome the problem, but I still don't like the idea. My main concern is with the cooling of the box in general. My house is contantly hot or cold to save on energy bills (hey, I bought an alienware, I need to cut back somewhere). I'd love to find a nice freon cooling system to plug the whole box in, keep the actual temp of the air that the fans are moving down. Why isn't this an option when you buy a computer, or more importantly, why can't you find a system like this to buy as an accessory anywhere (if there is, PLEASE respond with a URL, I've been looking for a while)
  • On one system that I helped develop, all of the fans had Hall effect sensors. These produce one pulse per revolution of the fan. These were wired into parallel I/O ports. The system software measured the RPM of all of the fans and generated a visual and audible alarm if any fan was dead or out of specified limits. All fans, even high-quality fans, eventually fail.
  • Earlier tonight I gave my ti4200 the finger test for heat and wasn't pleased. It occured to me that since the AGP slot is always topmost on the motherboard there is no reason why the GPU shouldn't be mounted on the backside of the PCB where there is more room for active cooling. As it stands now GPU heatsinks are designed to make the best of a cramped situation.

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