Problem Fans on Video Cards? 49
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?"
Hey! (Score:3, Funny)
Considering how fast new chipsets come out (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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)
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:1)
might as well toss your computer in a pool.
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:2)
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.
Although i heard some stories of people dropping a soda (accidentally) in their pc. After cleanup they lived happely ever after.
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:2)
"Unless you're a moron" (Score:2)
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.
Re:"Unless you're a moron" (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Re:"Unless you're a moron" (Score:1)
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.
Re:nVidia 4600 (Score:1)
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?
Fan burned out.... (Score:2)
Diamond TNT (Score:1, Informative)
how about no fans? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how about no fans? (Score:2)
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
False dichotomy (Score:2)
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)
Agreed, Zalman heatsinks seem pretty good (Score:2)
- 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
Hercules offers Free Replacment Fans (Score:2, Informative)
Duh (Score:1)
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...
Re:Duh (Score:1)
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!
same here (Score:1)
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.
Nvidia fans (Score:1)
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...
my experience (Score:1)
Find a 486 fan... (Score:1)
Yeah, I'm sure you thought of that too.
Hercules Kyro II (Score:2)
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.
2 Of my cards had this happen (Score:1)
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*
Tnt2 fan died recently (Score:1)
Two dead Dell/nVidia GeForce 2 cards (Score:2)
Since I didn't need performace on one of the machines, I replaced one card with a low-end card with no fan.
Watch out for the Vantas (Score:1)
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)
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.
nVidia GForce Ultra (Score:1)
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.
GeForce fan groaning until I restart, any idea? (Score:2)
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)
Re:Big fan, low speed... (Score:2)
bad cooling altogether (Score:1)
Fan Alarms (Score:2)
A thought on pcb layout (Score:1)