Video card fan needing lubrication?

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

I don't know if anyone here can help on this, but my GeForce4 Ti4200 has a problem with its cooling fan. Apparently if the GPU is cold, the fan is sort of jammed, and won't spin on a cold start, which of course leads to the chip's overheating and 3D accelerated games and apps crash. I need to spin it with my finger on cold start to get it spinning, but once spinning and the chip is warm, it spins okay.

Can the fan's motor be lubricated, or is it (or the video card) due for replacement?

[sapiens74 0]

You can try to clean it, or order a 3rd party fan from somewhere like heatsinkfactory.com

[Copernicus 0]

Hmm, I think you might want to replace the GPU's fan. It's much cheaper(usally $15 to 20 USD) and you don't have to worry about extra parts lieing around. It can be tricky so read the intstructions. Of course, if you wanted an excuse to go up a generation now's the time. I don't know what the cost of video cards are in the Phillipines but it seems that Raedeon 9600 and FX 5600 and 5600XT are inexpensive. BTW, how far do you live from the Mitsumi FDD plant? I want you to relay a mesage of how hard it is to get a Mitsumi FDD connected.

[Tomay 0]

I use to do this for my old PII and some PSU fans. If you can remove the fan on the oposite side of the fan is a sticker if you remove this sticker you should see the axle of the fan. Put a drop of lubricant there the best are teflon based ones. Whatch that you don't get any lubricant on the sticker, cos it won't hold afterward. Put the sticker back on spin the fan with your hand and try it on the card. If it still doesn't spin you better get a new one.

[Phalanx-Imawano 0]

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I use to do this for my old PII and some PSU fans. If you can remove the fan on the oposite side of the fan is a sticker if you remove this sticker you should see the axle of the fan. Put a drop of lubricant there the best are teflon based ones. Whatch that you don't get any lubricant on the sticker, cos it won't hold afterward. Put the sticker back on spin the fan with your hand and try it on the card. If it still doesn't spin you better get a new one.

Hey thanks Tomay! I was able to take the fan off the chip. That sneaky heat sink assembly was deceptive - the top plate with the NVIDIA logo was merely layed over the actual heat sink (the silver metal thing with the ribbings) and held by 4 screws; once that was off I could easily access the fan itself (held to the heat sink by 3 more screws) and found the backside with the motor's axle. I used some lubricating oil from Singer (the oil used for my mom's sewing machine) and it did the trick. The fan now spins like it used to.

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BTW, how far do you live from the Mitsumi FDD plant? I want you to relay a mesage of how hard it is to get a Mitsumi FDD connected.

I don't know if the old Matsushita/Panasonic plant that used to be near my house is that same plant, but anyway they moved to another city. I have a Panasonic FDD on my PC and it's no different from other FDD's I've installed (my dad's PC has a Fujitsu FDD).

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I have an extra one from a GeForce 4 Ti4600 I could spare you man...

I don't know if the pin connectors are right for that model GeForce2, but if they are, I would toss it your way cheap enough! If you lived near me especially... I am in N.Y. City now.

(Why do I have an extra? LOL, I put a CPU copper vantec cooler onto my GeForce 4 Ti4600 "GPU" w/ a 2300rpm 38.1 cfm fan on it... that, + rather large aluminum heatsinks onto the RAM on the card on that side, & 486 CPU heatsinks + fans on the other side with the RAM on that other side!)



* Thing looks like "Frankenstein" & I put up pics of it here last year iirc, blew some folks away, others laffed, but you could not dispute its cooling effectiveness for HIGH overclocks...

(Lots of homemade wiresplicing too & electrical tape & wire caps, etc. so looked funny, I admit that!)

Eats up 3 slots in my system, but I don't care... I made it up with Creative Labs "extigy" USB on soundcard being external now instead (only have NIC, & CENATEK RocketDrive in this system beside vidcard inside now).

Hehe well me being on the other side of the planet from your place would make that a difficult proposition, and besides I'm not too keen about removing the entire heat sink assembly from the video card (tried it, and chickened out when I noticed the binding posts holding the heat sink to the video card looked like they were going to crack). Anyway my problem is solved already.