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#1
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Video Card Fan Starts Buzzing
Hi,
My video card's (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 by Chaintech) fan started buzzing and its worrying me because I payed $130 for it 2 years ago. I dont know if its something to be worried about so im looking to replace the fan with the Lasagna A type fan from www.tennmax.com. So basically my 2 questions are... 1. Is the buzzing a concern? 2. Is the fan glued to the GPU? (It doesnt seem like it is. Its held in by 2 "Push Pins".) Ive only heard of the heat sinks being glued on but there isnt a heat sink on this one) |
#2
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just clean it
be careful how you pull it apart a clean will usually fix it else use another fan - depending on the size , you can just walk into a pc repair shop and buy a fan over the counter $2 - $5 usually "Falcon 1209" wrote in message ... Hi, My video card's (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 by Chaintech) fan started buzzing and its worrying me because I payed $130 for it 2 years ago. I dont know if its something to be worried about so im looking to replace the fan with the Lasagna A type fan from www.tennmax.com. So basically my 2 questions are... 1. Is the buzzing a concern? 2. Is the fan glued to the GPU? (It doesnt seem like it is. Its held in by 2 "Push Pins".) Ive only heard of the heat sinks being glued on but there isnt a heat sink on this one) |
#3
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On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:38:41 -0500, "Falcon 1209"
wrote: Hi, My video card's (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 by Chaintech) fan started buzzing and its worrying me because I payed $130 for it 2 years ago. I dont know if its something to be worried about so im looking to replace the fan with the Lasagna A type fan from www.tennmax.com. So basically my 2 questions are... 1. Is the buzzing a concern? 2. Is the fan glued to the GPU? (It doesnt seem like it is. Its held in by 2 "Push Pins".) Ive only heard of the heat sinks being glued on but there isnt a heat sink on this one) 1. Yes, the buzzing is a concern. If you were to lube it with a drop of heavyweight oil, now, and each time it start buzzing again (which could be soon or a long, long time depending on the particular fan and degree of wear) you could most likely get several more years of use from it. This is assuming it uses only a sleeve bearing. If it has a ball-bearing (you might not be able to trust the label, sadly enough) it cannot be lubed, as none are thick enough to have both the ball bearing and sleeve in same fan. Even if you choose to replace the fan it would be good to lube it now, as what may happen is that the fan will seize after you turn the system off, then you turn it on and it's quiet because it's not running, so video card overheats. 2. "Usually" those that use push-pins are not glued on. It might use a thermal interface material that melts after the card heats up, making it seem stuck on like a glue would, but these are much easier to get off if you try after running the card for a while so it's heated up, softened the material. Just as likely it could just be the typical thermal grease, much easier to remove. If you grasp the fan frame with two fingers and can wiggle it back and forth fairly easily, it would almost certainly be the grease under it. The Tennmax Lasagna fans are poor at cooling and also use low-quality junk fans. You'd be better off getting something else. What I usually do is take an old Pentium 1 heatsink and put a new fan on it, something like a a 50-60mm x 15mm thick of the low-RPM variety. That makes the 'sink too thick to allow use of the PCI slot below the card but I deliberately leave that slot empty anyway to improve cooling. A decent name-brand fan as I described will last multiple times as long as the tiny thin fans, and be quieter per same cooling provided the replacement heatsink is at least as big as the old one. |
#4
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I have a MSI Ti4200 and it started doing the same thing after I fiddled
with it. But I turned off the system and the next day it was back to normal. Had that happen a few times but all is good for many many months now. On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 04:29:19 GMT, PBS wrote: just clean it be careful how you pull it apart a clean will usually fix it else use another fan - depending on the size , you can just walk into a pc repair shop and buy a fan over the counter $2 - $5 usually "Falcon 1209" wrote in message ... Hi, My video card's (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 by Chaintech) fan started buzzing and its worrying me because I payed $130 for it 2 years ago. I dont know if its something to be worried about so im looking to replace the fan with the Lasagna A type fan from www.tennmax.com. So basically my 2 questions are... 1. Is the buzzing a concern? 2. Is the fan glued to the GPU? (It doesnt seem like it is. Its held in by 2 "Push Pins".) Ive only heard of the heat sinks being glued on but there isnt a heat sink on this one) -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ |
#5
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kony wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:38:41 -0500, "Falcon 1209" wrote: Hi, My video card's (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 by Chaintech) fan started buzzing and its worrying me because I payed $130 for it 2 years ago. I dont know if its something to be worried about so im looking to replace the fan with the Lasagna A type fan from www.tennmax.com. So basically my 2 questions are... 1. Is the buzzing a concern? 2. Is the fan glued to the GPU? (It doesnt seem like it is. Its held in by 2 "Push Pins".) Ive only heard of the heat sinks being glued on but there isnt a heat sink on this one) 1. Yes, the buzzing is a concern. If you were to lube it with a drop of heavyweight oil, now, and each time it start buzzing again (which could be soon or a long, long time depending on the particular fan and degree of wear) you could most likely get several more years of use from it. This is assuming it uses only a sleeve bearing. If it has a ball-bearing (you might not be able to trust the label, sadly enough) it cannot be lubed, as none are thick enough to have both the ball bearing and sleeve in same fan. Even if you choose to replace the fan it would be good to lube it now, as what may happen is that the fan will seize after you turn the system off, then you turn it on and it's quiet because it's not running, so video card overheats. 2. "Usually" those that use push-pins are not glued on. It might use a thermal interface material that melts after the card heats up, making it seem stuck on like a glue would, but these are much easier to get off if you try after running the card for a while so it's heated up, softened the material. Just as likely it could just be the typical thermal grease, much easier to remove. If you grasp the fan frame with two fingers and can wiggle it back and forth fairly easily, it would almost certainly be the grease under it. The Tennmax Lasagna fans are poor at cooling and also use low-quality junk fans. You'd be better off getting something else. What I usually do is take an old Pentium 1 heatsink and put a new fan on it, something like a a 50-60mm x 15mm thick of the low-RPM variety. That makes the 'sink too thick to allow use of the PCI slot below the card but I deliberately leave that slot empty anyway to improve cooling. A decent name-brand fan as I described will last multiple times as long as the tiny thin fans, and be quieter per same cooling provided the replacement heatsink is at least as big as the old one. So what fan/heatsink should I get? And How do i go about installing it? |
#6
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#7
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On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:25:19 GMT, kony wrote:
On 1 Jul 2004 10:48:48 -0700, (Falcon1209) wrote: I "think" (not sure) that a Thermaltake Blue Orb will fit those. I've never tried it myself but thought I remembers others using one. There are more expensive, fancier heatsinks, but I find it hard to swallow paying $20 or more for a video card heatsink, especially on a video card that's now worth less than $50 (since it's used, with failed fan). Even so they do sometimes go on sale, with a Google search for "Geforce 4 TI heatsink" being the way to find them. Those 486 fans and heatsinks - well any CPU one is way way beefier and the fan generally is way way more power ful than the dinky fans. When I had to replace the one on my video card and northbridge chipset on a motherboard - I looked at various exact replacements and besides not being able to find the heatsinks that fit - the fans were incredibly wimpy. The cfms were really low. The wimpiest CPU as most can probably imagine is way way stronger. I cant remember but the stock fans were like 5 cfm or something and the wimpiest replacement video fans like the blue orb was like 15-25 cfm and so was the wimpiest CPU fan and of course the heatsinks were massively larger. That blue orb fit on a KT133 northbridge chip and several 400mx level and Geforce2 cards I tried them on . Dont know about the Geforce 4 cards though. If the ciurrent heatsink can take a fan replacement easily hes lucky. All the ones I had , used weird proprietary trays or something in which the fan sat in, so it was impossible to replace them with standard fans. I cracked the old heatsink off using the instructions that many sites have - use an old credit card underneath to shield the board and using a screwdriver to leverage the heatsink off. This scared the ka ka out of me but it worked like many said it would. The thing popped off. And then Id read a lot of people either mixing epoxy glue together with thermal grease - weird but they say it works but you have to pay attention to the viscosity or something of the glue so the paste doesnt weaken it too much. Something like that. I chickened out and used a few drops of super glue in the corners and thermal paste in the middle and that worked great. Of course I can probably never take the darn thing off now. Others can probably buy thermal epoxy cheap. Around here they wanted 20 bucks a tube. |
#8
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On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 23:43:52 -1000, "
wrote: Those 486 fans and heatsinks - well any CPU one is way way beefier and the fan generally is way way more power ful than the dinky fans. When I had to replace the one on my video card and northbridge chipset on a motherboard - I looked at various exact replacements and besides not being able to find the heatsinks that fit - the fans were incredibly wimpy. The cfms were really low. The wimpiest CPU as most can probably imagine is way way stronger. I cant remember but the stock fans were like 5 cfm or something and the wimpiest replacement video fans like the blue orb was like 15-25 cfm and so was the wimpiest CPU fan and of course the heatsinks were massively larger. Yep, most stock video card fans are pathetc... noisey, low-flow, high-rpm, and quick to fail. If I put together a system for someone I'll leave the 'sink on if they're concerned about warranty but any card I bought for myself within the past few years had a heastink/fan replacement right after I'd benched it long enough to be sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. That blue orb fit on a KT133 northbridge chip and several 400mx level and Geforce2 cards I tried them on . Dont know about the Geforce 4 cards though. If the ciurrent heatsink can take a fan replacement easily hes lucky. All the ones I had , used weird proprietary trays or something in which the fan sat in, so it was impossible to replace them with standard fans. There were some cards with really odd 'sinks too, more of a decoration than anything, some even had non-standard mounting holes. Never payed close enough attention to notice of those cards also had the standard holes too, but if not, either epoxy or a lot of work fabricating a custom 'sink would be necessary. I cracked the old heatsink off using the instructions that many sites have - use an old credit card underneath to shield the board and using a screwdriver to leverage the heatsink off. This scared the ka ka out of me but it worked like many said it would. The thing popped off. And then Id read a lot of people either mixing epoxy glue together with thermal grease - weird but they say it works but you have to pay attention to the viscosity or something of the glue so the paste doesnt weaken it too much. Something like that. I chickened out and used a few drops of super glue in the corners and thermal paste in the middle and that worked great. Of course I can probably never take the darn thing off now. Others can probably buy thermal epoxy cheap. Around here they wanted 20 bucks a tube. It's pretty silly how much thermal epoxy costs, one place with the best price I've seen is http://www.melcor.com/thermepx.html , though allelectronics has blister packs for cheaper, at least till they run out, http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...X-4&type=store |
#9
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kony wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 23:43:52 -1000, " wrote: Those 486 fans and heatsinks - well any CPU one is way way beefier and the fan generally is way way more power ful than the dinky fans. When I had to replace the one on my video card and northbridge chipset on a motherboard - I looked at various exact replacements and besides not being able to find the heatsinks that fit - the fans were incredibly wimpy. The cfms were really low. The wimpiest CPU as most can probably imagine is way way stronger. I cant remember but the stock fans were like 5 cfm or something and the wimpiest replacement video fans like the blue orb was like 15-25 cfm and so was the wimpiest CPU fan and of course the heatsinks were massively larger. Yep, most stock video card fans are pathetc... noisey, low-flow, high-rpm, and quick to fail. If I put together a system for someone I'll leave the 'sink on if they're concerned about warranty but any card I bought for myself within the past few years had a heastink/fan replacement right after I'd benched it long enough to be sure there wasn't anything wrong with it. That blue orb fit on a KT133 northbridge chip and several 400mx level and Geforce2 cards I tried them on . Dont know about the Geforce 4 cards though. If the ciurrent heatsink can take a fan replacement easily hes lucky. All the ones I had , used weird proprietary trays or something in which the fan sat in, so it was impossible to replace them with standard fans. There were some cards with really odd 'sinks too, more of a decoration than anything, some even had non-standard mounting holes. Never payed close enough attention to notice of those cards also had the standard holes too, but if not, either epoxy or a lot of work fabricating a custom 'sink would be necessary. I cracked the old heatsink off using the instructions that many sites have - use an old credit card underneath to shield the board and using a screwdriver to leverage the heatsink off. This scared the ka ka out of me but it worked like many said it would. The thing popped off. And then Id read a lot of people either mixing epoxy glue together with thermal grease - weird but they say it works but you have to pay attention to the viscosity or something of the glue so the paste doesnt weaken it too much. Something like that. I chickened out and used a few drops of super glue in the corners and thermal paste in the middle and that worked great. Of course I can probably never take the darn thing off now. Others can probably buy thermal epoxy cheap. Around here they wanted 20 bucks a tube. It's pretty silly how much thermal epoxy costs, one place with the best price I've seen is http://www.melcor.com/thermepx.html , though allelectronics has blister packs for cheaper, at least till they run out, http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bi...X-4&type=store Sigh. I was playin Halo yesterday and the fan was quiet and all, then the screen scrambles up, kinda like what would happen if you changed to a cable channel that you didnt get. But im writing this using the same comp... I want to get a socket 7 sink and a fan but all this epoxy mumbo jumbo sounds risky, expensive, and difficult... and i might not even get the right stuff for the job... Ive got 2 PCI slots below my AGP so thats not a problem. Cant i just find a good fan and put that on? |
#10
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On 3 Jul 2004 10:27:47 -0700, (Falcon1209)
wrote: Sigh. I was playin Halo yesterday and the fan was quiet and all, then the screen scrambles up, kinda like what would happen if you changed to a cable channel that you didnt get. But im writing this using the same comp... I want to get a socket 7 sink and a fan but all this epoxy mumbo jumbo sounds risky, expensive, and difficult... and i might not even get the right stuff for the job... Ive got 2 PCI slots below my AGP so thats not a problem. Cant i just find a good fan and put that on? Epoxy isn't difficult to use, just buy some "thermally conductive" not electrically conductive. Most common type I'd recommend is Arctic Alumina Epoxy, http://www.svcompucycle.com/araltherad.html , but that's partially because it's the type I usually buy simply to save on shipping as I'll often need an odd part or two from same store, which has good prices on adapter cables and misc sales from time to time. The application of epoxy, after mixing equal portions of part "A" and "B", is similar to thermal compound, then part is clamped or at least held firmly together till it's set up some, typically at least 3 minutes. It needs be applied and heatsink set in it within about 2 minutes (after first starting to mix it) for optimal results. Key to using epoxy is that it is permanent, so the heatsink used needs be one of the type that accepts a standard or at least very easy to find fan, so that if someday fan did fail, or you later wanted to use a more or less powerful fan, you can do so without need to change the (permanently attached) metal heatsink base. It might take as much time to find a fan with connector compatible with the video card's fan socket, else you'd need splice the old fan's plug to the new fan, or just run the fan from a motherboard header or power supply plug (two of the easiest methods but to some it's not as asthetically pleasing). Of course it is instead possible to buy a replacement fan but you need be certain that it's compatible with the specific card. Typically they had clip mounting holes that were very nearly equidistant from the center of the GPU, which made a point-to-point line at roughly 45' to the sides of the square GPU. In other words, note where the clip on your current heatsink attaches and compare those mounting spots to heatsinks on "most" other Geforce 4 TI cards... certainly you'd need to compare more than one other card since it could also be a proprietary mounted type even if yours isn't. So, easist replacement could possibly be the most obvious one, simply do a Google search for Geforce 4 TI replacement fan, although some companies warranty their cards for long enough period that it would still be under warranty, you might ask Chaintech if they'd send you a fan, or sell you one of the warranty period is over. |
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