Graphics Card fan failure

[VCDHunter]

My b@stard GeForce4 cards fan has sopped working. I wondered why Urban Terror kept crashing

I'm loathe to send the thing back as it'll mean expensive, secure delivery plus god knows how long without a half decent video card (the replacement is a GeForce2).

Can I replace the fan somehow ? Or does this involve me sending this back to the vendor ?

[redwudz]

I've replaced video card fans before. If it is a standard type of fan, 40mm or the like, they are similar to the fans on the older cpu coolers, such as PII. You need this information: Size, voltage, possibly thickness. Sometimes, it is easier to buy an inexpensive CPU cooler and remove the fan. Otherwise, do a search for say, 40MM fans on the net. You may have to reuse the video card fan plug by cutting the wires and soldering the new leads together. Look for ball bearing fans as opposed to sleeve bearing, they will last longer.

Edit: Kind of funky, but for temporary use to keep from damaging your card, you can put a regular case fan on a bent aluminum bracket to blow against your card till you can get a proper fan.

[VCDHunter]

I've replaced video card fans before. If it is a standard type of fan, 40mm or the like, they are similar to the fans on the older cpu coolers, such as PII. You need this information: Size, voltage, possibly thickness. Sometimes, it is easier to buy an inexpensive CPU cooler and remove the fan. Otherwise, do a search for say, 40MM fans on the net. You may have to reuse the video card fan plug by cutting the wires and soldering the new leads together. Look for ball bearing fans as opposed to sleeve bearing, they will last longer.

Its one of those Asus V9280 VideoSuite GeForce4 Ti 4200 cards. It has a massive heatsink on it with a silver fan.

Edit: Kind of funky, but for temporary use to keep from damaging your card, you can put a regular case fan on a bent aluminum bracket to blow against your card till you can get a proper fan.

The card is right next to my 2 intake case fans so I am hoping this will keep it from melting

The card was only bought in April so I'm hoping to get a replacement or at least a repair.

Cheers redwudz.

[redwudz]

Yeah, I was afraid it was one of those custom fan setups. I've got one on my MSI geoforce card, probably no way to replace it easily. You can try to remove it and put a drop of oil from the underside. I don't want you to risk the warranty by tampering with it, though. Unfortunatelly, some manufactures use cheap sleeve type bearings and their failure rate is much higher than the ball bearing fans. Probably best to ship it off and hope for a speedy replacement or repair.

[rallynavvie]

Don't send it out, just get an aftermarket cooler for it. There are some universal heatpipe ones but they're bulky and don't look nice. There are some made specifically for the GeForce4 cards. I put one on my Ti4400 before I even installed it. Only problems I had was not any PCI card would fit under it after I put the fan on it since it sits higher than the OEM one. I just put my NIC in under it and it's fine. A friend who has the same mod put one of those PCI slot fans next to it to further cool it. This is the one we have:
http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thergef4chip.html

It's only $15 there and it also comes with heatsinks for the memory on the VGA card (and trust me these get HOT so it is helping). Another thing you need to consider is it has a 3-wire fan so it likely won't fit onto your 2-pin connector on the VGA card. I believe it has an adapter included to plug into a molex 4-pin power connector. I'm pretty sure this is meant to fit on ANY GeForce4 card.

[VCDHunter]

Thanks, but that looks quite smaller than the heatsink thats already on there -

http://uk.asus.com/products/vga/v9280vs/overview.htm

I've emailed the company but have yet to get a reply from 'em. Looks like a phone call job tomorrow.