Help! GPU fan not working

[Thresh25]

So my gpu fan had been getting really loud and obnoxious so I decided to take it apart and reapply some thermal paste. Now when I put it back together my computer boots up fine and everything but the fan will not work. When I go into AMD vision control center and manually turn the fan on it won't work either. I plugged the chord from the fan/heatsink back into the board and have taken it apart and reattached this chord several times now to no avail... any suggestions? I don't see how I could be plugging this cord in wrong but I guess it's possible.

 

[RubeSmench]

The obnoxious sounds could have been an early sign of imminent failure. Do you have any spare fans that you can use to test the connection on the GPU card or a spare connection on the mobo or a converter cable to hook up the old fan to a different power source?

 

[Thresh25]

Unfortunately the connection on my card takes 2 pins, and all my fans are 3 pins. Also I believe all the connections on my mobo are 3 pins as well. When I boot up my pc the fan wont run but if I take tweezers I can fanangle my way to the connection and press up against it to make it tighter. This will get the fan to run but very slowly and I can tell it's not full speed (even when I manually crank it up). Is there any other way I can tell if its the fan itself or the gpu's connection to the fan?

I was thinking about buying a new fan/heatsink but that's like 60 bucks or so, so it may just be a better idea to get a new card unfortunately.

 

[RubeSmench]

I would imagine there must be some sort of way to test the pin connectors on the card with a voltmeter of sorts, however I do not know the specifics. But if we think about this logically, the problem should be with the fan itself, rather than the heatsink or the GPU card. When you press the connection to make it tighter, you are forcing the stripped end of the wiring inside the connector to make a more solid contact and thus allowing the flow of electricity to continue. But as the male connectors (pins on the gpu) should be conductive throughout the surface area, the only way to make sense of your results would be that the soldered connection is decaying and thus compacting the pins back into their respective slots. Seeing as this hardly make sense even as I type it, I would say the fault lies in the fan. Additionally, it appears partial fault could be resulting from bad bearings within the fan. Seems the recommendation is to remove the sticker in the center and add a drop of oil or two. However, at this point that may be redundant as the fan may be dead.

Sorry that I cannot think of any more cost efficient method to narrow the solution down one way or another. Best of luck with coming to a resolution. - Rube