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Hi,
I bought a new computer a month or so ago, it was from a box store (Future Shop - I know that makes me less of a tech guy but it was cheap!) and along with the machine I bought a PCI wireless card. I didn't feel like paying the tech guys there to put it in for me so I voided my warranty by opening up my case and putting in the card. I know it probably wasn't the best thing I could have done but I have built my own computers in the past so I generally know what I'm doing. I had a really nice video card that came with the computer, NVIDIA GForce 9500 with 512MB RAM on it. It also had a fan on it, a fan and a heatsink on the card. The fan started to make tons of noise all the time. I tried fixing it by taking it apart and looking for a place to put a drop of oil, the oil didn't help at all, and since I had no warranty through Future Shop or HP, I took the card into a local tech shop. They said that since it was an HP card, it was proprietary hardware and it would require a very specific fan to replace the old one, not just some generic thing. I ended up just buying a new card with silent cooling in order to bypass all the trouble I would have had to go through. The new one is an ASUS NVIDIA 8400 with 512MB RAM on it, slightly less but far more than good enough to run what I need it to.
My question is, I have a fully functional video card just sitting here, it has a broken fan and heatsink on it but other than that it's a beautiful card. What are my options? Is it worth trying to fix in order to sell it? Should I just give it away to someone who doesn't care about lots of noise (because the fan still turns, it's just loud)... I don't know what to do with it but there's bound to be better uses than for it to sit in a box in my closet!
One other thing is, a friend of mine is looking for a video card and he said he would take it off my hands, remove the fan so it doesn't make noise, and just use it till it fries from the heat, at which point he would just put his old card back in and keep going, at least he would have a nice card for a week or so. In some ways that doesn't seem to be too bad of an idea, but would doing that pose a risk to other parts of his computer, not just the video card itself? He doesn't care about the card frying but doesn't want to fry or ruin other parts of the machine.
Thanks a lot,
Matt
If you don't care about losing the card, you can attempt to repair the fan yourself. I don't know what would be involved, but if you're going to trash the card anyway, you have nothing to lose.
As for your friend, anytime something overheats in your computer, you run the risk of it affecting other components. I wouldn't take the chance, but that's me.
You should be able to replace the fan yourself. There are plenty of electronics stores around that carry hundreds of different fan sizes/voltages. It will just take some legwork to track one down. A new fan shouldn't be more than $10us. I'm not in Canada, so I can't recommend any specific store, but it shouldn't be too hard to find one. For that matter you could use wire ties to strap almost any fan over the heatsink if you were in a pinch.
Now for some advice. Noisy fans may just be noisy, though it is often a sign of a failing fan. Adding a drop of oil is a very short term fix. It will quite it for a day, but the oil (and any grime that gets caught up in the oil) will ruin the fan.
Thanks to both of you, I have no real use for the card, I'm happy enough with my new one (I was desperate to get the problem fixed and so I didn't want to wait to get the fan fixed and that's why I bought the new card), so I'll probably give it to my friend to repair. Thanks for the advice for just strapping on a generic fan Dave... I hadn't thought of that. I will ensure though that he doesn't just take off the fan, if it can wreck other parts of the computer, it's not worth the risk.
Thanks,
Matt
New question on the same topic! I have offered my card to a few people and said that with not much effort they could probably attach another fan and have it work just fine. A friend of mine said that he could easily attach a fan but he's not sure if upgrading his currant card is worth it. All that he has told me he has is an ATI Radeon 9200. I have an NVIDIA GForce 9500 with 512MB DDR2 RAM on it. Obviously the RAM makes a difference but is it possible for someone to try and compare them without knowing his RAM? I can ask him and update the thread on how much RAM he has but in the meantime, maybe it's possible without that.
Thanks,
Matt
Princess auto in winipeg has a few fans that might work for your card.
as long as they blow enough cfp and can be glued screwed stapled(lol on stapled) on .
There are loads of places to find a fan you can adapt to your needs as long as there is enough room.
i hot melted glued one on a video card got out of free box at a swap meet. still works.
room and cfp(cubic feet per minuet) are the two to keep in mind. and if it sounds like an f8 or mig21 at close range would be a factor....
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