GFX card fan... getting hands dirty!

[harrytewkesbury]

Hey all. Have had my rig up for about two years now, and naturally its starting to lag behind the competition. My GFX card is a Geforce ti200 which, along with teh rest of the rig, i would like to update. Trouble is i cant because im a cheapo student with no money. Anyway, i have come to realise that during the course of these two years, the cooling fan has never actually worked. I recently detached it from the card and had a look around. It is very stiff, and altough it turns, it hardly does smoothly. I even oiled the bastard, but to no avail. I guess since it doesnt work i could pry it apart and see if the bearings are messed up. Trouble is, would this completely screw me over or not? Anyone taken apart a fan before?

 

[Codeine]

Harrytewkesbury, you just mention that during 2 years of your cards use, the fan never worked. So this is not a problem. If it was, your system would of obviously had a problem a long time ago. I think your gettting way to technical over something rather simple.

 

[harrytewkesbury]

Well i would be inclined to agree with you, but here's the thing (i should have included this in the original post). I just borrowed Far Cry from a friend and installed it. The frame rate is surprisingly high for my system (about 30-40/s) but every so often the game freezes for a few seconds, and then carries on at high speed as if nothing had happened. I appreciate that slowdown usually comes from texture loading etc, but there is no HDD activity during the pauses. Trawling through the forums led me to believe that my GFX card is overheating: and then the fan issue comes to a head. Either way... i still dont know how to disassemble a fan! I guess if it doesnt work, then there is no harm in trashing it in the name of desperation. I could always attach a case fan to the card powered from the MOBO. That would only set me back a few coins...

 

[Codeine]

Harrytewkesbury, your video card is not OH. You get lag becuase of your system.. Your running a 700mhz processor, thats extremely out-dated. Im surprised you can even play those games. 76 degrees celcius for a video card is not dangerous, for a cpu it is. 6800 Ultras and X800 XT's run around 80 degrees ceclius.

 

[harrytewkesbury]

Well... i have "taken apart" the fan and found no problems per se. Of course by takin it apart i have completely obliterated it so no more broken fan problems for me. Twisted solution but there you are... I tested the card after thrashing it on a game or two and it really heats up! Im gonna try underclocking it, see what happens. BTW, where did yuo get 700Mhz from? I am on a 1.3 Ghz comp w/ 384ddr RAM... Never mind.. lol

 

[003]

you realize that you can replace the heatsink/fan on the video card, right? I recommend this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835110103
It's only $10 and it works great and its quiet. I got one to replace a noisy fan on my 5600 and its perfect.

 

[MrBebop26]

The reason it doesnt turn smooth is because thats how it turns in the first place, magnets and copper... So it will almost "jerk" around.

-Ryan

 

[harrytewkesbury]

I knew you could replace CPU and case fans but gfx fans?... the link points to the latter: the power connecter has three pins, the one on my ti200 has only a two pin power connnecter. Will look in to it further though...

As an aside, i think something fishy is going on in the depths of my machine... I, for some reason, put on a game of Quake 3 and the pauses have come up here too! Its really started to annoy me, particularly since this is a very recent phenomena, and Q3 is hardly taxing, even to my rig. Its been playable since day one with out a hitch... any idea why the game would pause like this? in regards to the fan, it never worked so im steering clear of heat issues.

 

[003]

I knew you could replace CPU and case fans but gfx fans?... the link points to the latter: the power connecter has three pins, the one on my ti200 has only a two pin power connnecter. Will look in to it further though...

it will still work. i only have 2 pin too but it comes with a converter to let it leech power from the hard drive cable if you only have two pin. trust me i have this thiing and i had to do just that, and it works just fine

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

The reason it doesnt turn smooth is because thats how it turns in the first place, magnets and copper... So it will almost "jerk" around.

-Ryan

I think he means it's ceased

And those random skips I have seen caused by overheating graphics card's twice (out of twice)