Video Card Dead Fan Repair Guide

[nicklmg]

Buy video cards on Amazon: http://geni.us/NFKIZHr

 

Fixing a broken video card fan - the super Canadian way!!

 

 

[Shiv78]

noice been waiting for a while

 

(pls no suggest floatplane am poor high sckewl)

[Dragonheart]

6 minutes ago, Shiv78 said:

noice been waiting for a while

 

(pls no suggest floatplane am poor high sckewl)

*suggest floatplane*

[Enderman]

Stalling fans by taping them like that is a horrible idea, you can fry the GPU's fan controller doing that.

If you want to stop the fans just unplug their connector from the PCB.

 

Also, the reason the titan throttled is because that noctua fan is designed for airflow.

It probably has approx 5-10x less static pressure than the stock blower fan.

There's a reason centrifugal fans are used on that type of cooler instead of axial fans.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Funnily enough, last year I had to pull both my 770s (the MSI 4GB version) because of fan issues.  One had a rattling front fan, the other had a dead front fan which caused the rear one to run at 100% all the time (even at low temps, so probably a "safe mode" in the card's BIOS). 

I had planned to use a pair of 92mm fans but eventually decided against it.  A 1070 is just as powerful as the SLI'ed 770s were while using almost 400W less.   

 

I could understand fixing a card that's somewhat younger and more powerful though.

 

[Maquak]

My Asus GTX 1080 Turbo after cooler upgrade 53c MAX in full load old one was too noisy for me

[Shreyas1]

wait so do 3rd party manufacturers buy a bunch of reference cards and remove the coolers?

 

If so, then why don't they sell the coolers instead of discarding them 

[XHAD]

Why the music? I came here for the content not for whatever that music is

[Shiv78]

1 hour ago, Shreyas1 said:

wait so do 3rd party manufacturers buy a bunch of reference cards and remove the coolers?

 

No I think they make/buy them without coolers or usually without a heatsink at all.

[TsuraniEmpire]

Huge fan, not an internet expert but slight oversight? or not possibly on the Titan.

 

I'm sure you know replacing a axial fan w/ an impeller fan going to leave the airflow extremely erratic. Once again sure you know that, but more importantly, axial fan outputs result in a conical shaped air flow, meaning the air is moving from bearing outwards, with the outer edge of the air mass moving fastest with the center area of the fan being the most static. Resulting in a lot of its most effective mass being forced to condense and escape out of the perimeter, or through that Linus tape job =) If that wasn't clear a LOT of the mass, especially on axial fans is blowing against the shroud, and although you can't lose mass, you can condense and redirect it, possibly to the detriment of the already negligible flow you get out of the center of axial fans. 

 

Could be completely wrong, hard to know without a head-on look at the fan, only about 3 seconds I could find that showed anything close. HUGE fan, appreciate all you do and not bashing at all, just a thought in the interest of fair, scientific results.

[Nirvana Rulez]

Hey, I did that on my MSI GTX 560 TI last December or January this Year .... can't remember.

Funny that I now see a video about that now.

 

My first Fan broke about 2 Years ago and as I said last December or January the second one didn't really spin anymore. But it still spins from time to time, loud but it spins LOL.

With no GPU Fans spinning and that one Fan I grabbed from an old AIO Cooler, the temperature will never drop below 50°C.

If I wanna play games that heavy like BF1 or F1 2017 I have to put the AIO Fan to 100%, but it will never go higher than 90°C usually stays at like 80°C.

 

 

[Skanky Sylveon]

Pretty informative video.

Not surprised with the results though, blower style GPUs have an inherently diffident fan design.  One that is designed for pushing air through the side, instead of through the back.

 

A 3D printed adapter, instead of zip ties, would be possible, as long as the chosen plastic can handle the thermals.  (for the love of god, don't use PLA)

 

@LinusTech Is the open air card (Strix 1070) any thicker after the mod?  If so, would it still be considered a "dual slot"?

[Enderman]

19 minutes ago, CUDA_Cores said:

Correct me if i'm wonrg, but if a motor (fan in this case) isn't moving, the mechanical movement will be converted directly into heat instead. Thus the fan motor will get hot, but there will be no damage to the fan controller since it's basically just a glorified resistive load now. 

It is very unlikely that the fan gets damaged, it can handle quite a bit of heat.

What can easily be damaged is the voltage control circuitry on the GPU/motherboard.

 

When a motor is stalled it draws a lot of current, many times what it is nominally rated at.

The voltage control on motherboards and GPUs is only designed to run the fan normally, or start it up.

The amount of current it draws at start up is the same as the stall current, but the difference is that at start up it only uses those high currents for a fraction of a second.

If you stall the fan motor purpousefully, and for a long period of time, the controller needs to deliver those high currents continuously, not momentarily.

 

This prolonged period of time at max current is what often will result in a burned component on the board and non-working fan headers.

Luckily it seems like these two GPUs fan controllers were overbuilt enough to handle being stalled without burning up for the time linus had them taped.

Still is a horrible thing to do to electronics.

[Nicnac]

entertaining but not informative.

[Skanky Sylveon]

2 hours ago, CUDA_Cores said:

I've done the PC fan mod on many video cards before. Once I even did it on purpose to an R9 290 because it cooled better that way. If you stick bog standard 120mm fans on a GPU, it kind of turns into a triple-slot card because the fans add so much girth to the card. 

I wonder if slimline 120s will negatively affect performance on any significant way.

[Hans Power]

1 hour ago, Cinnabar Sonar said:

I wonder if slimline 120s will negatively affect performance on any significant way.

I used 2x Scythe slimline 100mm fans on an ATI HD4870 card once and those worked just fine. Not sure how it goes on modern cards but I think those actually produce less heat than especially older ATI cards so it should be enough and maybe you could even squeeze 3x of those fans on there depending on the model. However in a direct comparison a full height fan will wipe the floor with a slimline fan. The slimline fan will require much higher RPMs to match the airflow of a full height one. However all that doesn't matter if the slimline fans are enough for cool & quiet operation on a GPU which I think is very possible although I certainly won't guarantee it.

[Hans Power]

I just wanna take the chance to drop some general advice to keep fans alive for a long time:

1. If you happen to own a case (or mod it easily) where you can put in the GPU vertically instead of horizontally you should do that. Especially sleeve bearings but other bearing types as well work best longterm when you mount them vertically because of the lubricant distribution.
2. Keep your case (and your GPU) clean by utilizing filtered, positive airflow. I used that method on my 3 year old system and I never had to clean my case internally since then. Everything still looks like new. If you can't do that, use some compressed air and a vacuum cleaner - I'd actually recommend doing that about once a week if you can't utilize the positive airflow method.
3. If you have to mount the GPU horizontally, see if you can stabilize the GPU with some kind of bracket to avoid GPU sag - fan deformation can't be good for the bearings longterm.
4. If the fans on an old GPU start to rattle, try taking them out, remove the back sticker and and put some lubricant into the hole under it. I wouldn't use WD40, though cause that messes with the pre existing lubricant. Ballistol universal oil or silicone oil something similar should be fine. With that you should be able to revive the fan in many cases.

[Guest]

I am tempted to put 2x NF-F12 on my MSI R9 290. The temperatures and noise at load of this card are both annoying.

[Shiv78]

17 hours ago, CUDA_Cores said:

girth

g i r t h 

[7850OC]

Linus SAW tips 

[chrisgala]

Hi! New here and sorry to resurrect this. Well at some point Linus suggests to plug the fans on the mobo because they may draw too much from the card. I may be wrong but 9/10 Gpu fans draw 12v 0.5A each from the card and an industrial Noctua (the most power hungry) will not draw any more than 12v 0.3. So it would be safe right? Just double checking as I am in the process of doing this. Thanks! @LinusTech 

[chrisgala]

There is currently no replacement fan for that card, that's why I am obliged to do that.

[GoneWiththeWindows]

Were those 120mm or 140mm Noctua fans Linus used on the Asus Strix card? I have the same exact card and one of my fan fins are broken. It gets annoyingly loud on high rpm's.

[Shrimpy266]

Did you ever find out if they were 120mm or 140mm @technie? I think they might be 140mm but I just want to check before I pick up some 140mm Noctua fans.

[AlexTheGreatish]

 

9 hours ago, Shrimpy266 said:

Did you ever find out if they were 120mm or 140mm @technie? I think they might be 140mm but I just want to check before I pick up some 140mm Noctua fans.

Those were 120 fans