Info Fans Not Spinning - 7900 XTX - XFX Mercury

[blckgrffn]

Hey all -

I had a curious case happen with my ~8 month old card that's seen about 5 months of relatively light usage.

It's this guy, which is relevant to the story for its unique fan setup:

XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air Gaming Graphics Card

RX-79XMAIRB9

www.xfxforce.com

In the box, the fans come literally out of the card in their own foam layer and you install them yourself and they give a really cool "snick" as they pull in and you can easily take them back out. For reasons, I guess.

I've noticed it getting... louder? It seemed fine performance wise and I am 99% of the time on a headset so I guess I wasn't paying that close of attention.

On Wednesday night we fire up Hell Divers 2, which I run at high settings and use its super sampling option where I run it at higher than native resolution. Normally I am pulling about 75FPS pretty solid - game has plenty of jank which can sometimes pull it down but its looking good and running well enough for me - but we get the call started and folks join my Destroyer and... I am getting 8 fps. It was running fine, then it wasn't. Jank game does jank things, I quit, restart, starts at 40 fps then drops back to slideshow. I apologize to everyone again, reboot. SAME.

Fire up the overlay and see... zero fan RPM. So I take the side of my case off, get my face down there and sure as s there zero fan RPM and this is why the card is at 100c hot spot. I can see the first fan jerking just a bit and so I spin it and it spins up and goes to 3000 rpm and full hair drier mode. Other fans? Nothing even with a starter spin. Back to playing, we get our butts handed to us by predator strain, I was probably a jerk on the mic and it was a bum end to a gaming session. I decide to come back another day. Kudos for the one fan pulling all the weight, eh? Ran fine with it.

Marvel Rivals with my son Sunday morning - same BS. Case side comes back off, I poke the first fan, it spins, full hair drier mode. Play for 40 minutes, whatever. So this has been multiple reboots, I unplugged it, I reseated the power cables, reinstalled the drivers, no change.

Glumly, I was thinking RMA.

But you have to poke at it a bit more, right?

First, disabled Zero RPM mode so I don't have to boot into a game to see if it kicks in. Powered it down.

So I pulled the middle fan out looked it, seemed fine. Reboot, no change. Shut down.

Pulled out the first fan, looked at it... put it back in. Reboot. FIRST AND SECOND FAN SPIN. smh.

Multiple tries to get fan 3 on board. I pull each fan out, give them a stern look, peel off the plastic on the logo sticker, put them back in. No change.

Swap fan 3 to fan 2 spot. BOOOM. All fans back online.

Proceed to play about 90 minutes of Rivals, get mocked for choosing Ultron despite winning four matches in a row.

Thoughts: All the fans worked out of the box, right? Honestly... I don't know if I really checked? It seemed fine and quiet for a while? Does fan order matter? Why? This is totally permanently fixed, right? Ha.

Google was zero help on this, so I am posting about my XFX 7900 XTX Mercury Magnetic Air fans not spinning in hopes that someday some other fool might be told to randomly move their fans around and hope for the best!

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Weird issue, my 9070XT magair fans all work regardless of which one(s) I remove. They should all be wired in parallel so the circuit wouldn't be affected by removals.

I wonder if its a bios/fan control issue instead? It would explain the odd and inconsistent behavior. Might be worth reaching out to XFX to let them know and see if they have anything to say about it.

I suppose maybe some of the electronics on one or more of the fans might be failing causing the card to behave strangely. Maybe they can just send you a set of 3 new fans, which was the entire point behind the magair design, and see if that shores up the weirdness.

I bet when you noticed it was louder was when you started operating only on one fan running in hairdryer mode.

 

[blckgrffn]

Weird issue, my 9070XT magair fans all work regardless of which one(s) I remove. They should all be wired in parallel so the circuit wouldn't be affected by removals.

I wonder if its a bios/fan control issue instead? It would explain the odd and inconsistent behavior. Might be worth reaching out to XFX to let them know and see if they have anything to say about it.

I suppose maybe some of the electronics on one or more of the fans might be failing causing the card to behave strangely. Maybe they can just send you a set of 3 new fans, which was the entire point behind the magair design, and see if that shores up the weirdness.

I bet when you noticed it was louder was when you started operating only on one fan running in hairdryer mode.

I did flip between primary and secondary firmware with the switch (powering the PC down to do so, of course) and no change.

But yes, it's worth opening the ticket just to see what they say.

The fans seem dummy proof. They go in one way. There just pull themselves in. I don't get it.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I did flip between primary and secondary firmware with the switch (powering the PC down to do so, of course) and no change.

But yes, it's worth opening the ticket just to see what they say.

The fans seem dummy proof. They go in one way. There just pull themselves in. I don't get it.

If its anything like the 9070xt magair, both bioses are identical. Since bios modding really isnt possible due to encryption and checksumming I dont even know why they bother

 

[WelshBloke]

Do the fans connect with pogo pins? Any corrosion on any?

 

[SamMaster]

Do the fans connect with pogo pins? Any corrosion on any?

I was thinking that it sounds like a fan is not making proper contact in one of the slots, could be manufacturing tolerances ending in both extremes causing issues perhaps?

 

[blckgrffn]

Do the fans connect with pogo pins? Any corrosion on any?

I didn't see any, and there is a full little loop where they would touch so its supposed to be dummy proof... and they just snap in with some force.

@SamMaster yeah, there seems to be something to what you were saying, but @Hail The Brain Slug mentioned they are in parallel to so one fan being goofy shouldn't stop the others, right? But then why did changing the order of fans matter? Did it not matter? To be honest after all three came on I breathed a sigh of relief and buttoned it back up. I just wanted it to work and was really not wanting to RMA it.

Although a set of new fans might not be a bad request...

RE: corrosion, none observed - but now that I've licked them all just to be sure they were clean, I guess that might be something to worry about in the future???

/s ofc

 

[blckgrffn]

Got home today and the first fan isn't working, just the other two. Come on.

It must read RPM from fan 1 because its reading 0 rpm.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Take the advice, and hit up CS for new fans.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

I didn't see any, and there is a full little loop where they would touch so its supposed to be dummy proof... and they just snap in with some force.

@SamMaster yeah, there seems to be something to what you were saying, but @Hail The Brain Slug mentioned they are in parallel to so one fan being goofy shouldn't stop the others, right? But then why did changing the order of fans matter? Did it not matter? To be honest after all three came on I breathed a sigh of relief and buttoned it back up.

Best hypothesis I can come up with is there's a failure on one (or more) of the fans causing issues, maybe it shorts one of the lines or something causing problems with the fan system. Moving that faulty fan could alter the behavior, I suppose.

Ideally they easily agree to send you some new fans and you swap them out and everything works fine.

 

[blckgrffn]

Yep, going to swap out that first fan and just use the other two that spun up while I reach out to support. Two fans did OK.

Testament to those fans and the absolute unit of a cooler...

*Ticket opened, I'll keep the thread updated.*

Swapping other fans into the fan 1 spot doesn't seem to do anything, the fan that goes in never spins up but that same fan in slot 2 or 3 does. Sigh.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yep, going to swap out that first fan and just use the other two that spun up while I reach out to support. Two fans did OK.

Testament to those fans and the absolute unit of a cooler...

Doesn't hurt that they are using the PTM7950 either. @WelshBloke may have been on to something; perhaps a contact pin burned out?

 

[blckgrffn]

@DAPUNISHER the more I read about it, it seemed like getting a PTM7950 equipped card was the way forward since it seemed like all roads with the 7900XTX led to replacing it anyway.

My one 9070 also has it, maybe the XFX does too but it didn't list it. Somehow heatsink transfer material is now on my requirement list for new cards moving forward? How dumb is this market.

Also, nice, ticket response in ~12 hours:

"I think you might have at least 1 fan in the mix there that has failed, might be causing issues with the other fans.

We should be able to send out replacement fans."

Looks like I'll be trying out some new fans, guys. Good call.

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

My one 9070 also has it, maybe the XFX does too but it didn't list it.

PTM7950 was advertised for the 7900XTX Mercury MagAir model, so it's got it.

Somehow heatsink transfer material is now on my requirement list for new cards moving forward? How dumb is this market.

I wouldn't really call adding this to the checklist for shopping "dumb", it has so many advantages over traditional paste but a lot of manufacturers haven't started to use it yet either due to cost or habit. I bought a large sheet and replace paste with it myself where it's not provided.

Also, nice, ticket response in ~12 hours:

"I think you might have at least 1 fan in the mix there that has failed, might be causing issues with the other fans.

We should be able to send out replacement fans."

Looks like I'll be trying out some new fans, guys. Good call.

Glad to see they're actually holding up their promises over the magnetic fans. They should be willing to send them out easily since its considerably cheaper and less risk than making you send the card in for an RMA.

I look forward to seeing if that solves the issue entirely.

 

[blckgrffn]

PTM7950 was advertised for the 7900XTX Mercury MagAir model, so it's got it.

Ah yes, sorry, of course. I meant the Steel Legend AsRock 9070 I purchased at launch that I hope has it, despite it not being explicit in its listings. Total wire crossing moment for me. My son is using that at the moment and I have a PowerColor Reaper that does advertise the heatsink compound used. Sitting in its box for the time being, bought at MSRP when I over invested in waiting in line at Microcenter

I wouldn't really call adding this to the checklist for shopping "dumb", it has so many advantages over traditional paste but a lot of manufacturers haven't started to use it yet either due to cost or habit. I bought a large sheet and replace paste with it myself where it's not provided.

I just meant that so many cards - including "mid range" using so much power that it can lead to premature failure/leakage of the heatsink material seems crazy to me.

Of course, as we push transistor size down the "hot spot" temps are likely to keep climbing so new science and solutions should come as no surprise. Still, it makes me shake my head a bit at the size and complexity of these coolers. It's no wonder that prices must go up in that sense. A $600 "midrange" card has a flagship cooler from 5 years ago.

Glad to see they're actually holding up their promises over the magnetic fans. They should be willing to send them out easily since its considerably cheaper and less risk than making you send the card in for an RMA.

I look forward to seeing if that solves the issue entirely.

Absolutely, I agree. It is super trivial to pop them out, change them, etc. I'll be back with updates.

 

[Makaveli]

PTM7950 was advertised for the 7900XTX Mercury MagAir model, so it's got it.

I have this model and that is correct its comes with PTM7950 stock from factory.

 

[blckgrffn]

Guys, I said one fan worked sometimes but the other two didn’t work any more.

So they sent two fans.

Guess how many fans work now? Two. Two fans. Third original fan decided to check out now that the other two showed up. I swapped through each of the original fans and none of them spin now.

Good news is after testing, the new fans (which I put a little dot on the back label of with a permanent marker so I didn’t confused) work in any slot, so I have them in slot one (for fan rpm reporting) and three to spread them out.

I updated the ticket nicely asking for a third fan so I can be back full power. I’ll report back how that works out.

Still is a W in my book if it’s just new fans.

 

[Bryo4321]

Guys, I said one fan worked sometimes but the other two didn’t work any more.

So they sent two fans.

Guess how many fans work now? Two. Two fans. Third original fan decided to check out now that the other two showed up. I swapped through each of the original fans and none of them spin now.

Good news is after testing, the new fans (which I put a little dot on the back label of with a permanent marker so I didn’t confused) work in any slot, so I have them in slot one (for fan rpm reporting) and three to spread them out.

I updated the ticket nicely asking for a third fan so I can be back full power. I’ll report back how that works out.

Still is a W in my book if it’s just new fans.

That’s progress, glad it’s working out. I find it very odd all 3 went at roughly the same time. Maybe a bad batch? Hopefully the new ones keep kicking!

 

[blckgrffn]

That’s progress, glad it’s working out. I find it very odd all 3 went at roughly the same time. Maybe a bad batch? Hopefully the new ones keep kicking!

They’ve already sent me a tracking number for the 3rd fan so that’s all good!

It had to have been a bad batch or something, right? With zero fan being the default I bet they only really worked maybe 200 hours this year. That may sound like a lot but really my guess is they are rated for thousands of hours of operation?

I agree and hope the new ones put up a better showing - if they don’t I’ll rez this thread

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Just spitballing here: Perhaps they are more sensitive to the accumulation of dust or something? Being as they are incredibly easy to service, I'd set a reminder to pop them out and clean them all with isopropyl every 6 months as preventive maintenance. I'd ask the tech support if doing that to the fan sockets is advisable too.

 

[WelshBloke]

Just spitballing here: Perhaps they are more sensitive to the accumulation of dust or something? Being as they are incredibly easy to service, I'd set a reminder to pop them out and clean them all with isopropyl every 6 months as preventive maintenance. I'd ask the tech support if doing that to the fan sockets is advisable too.

I was wondering if there's a problem with the card providing current to the fans.

 

[blckgrffn]

Just spitballing here: Perhaps they are more sensitive to the accumulation of dust or something? Being as they are incredibly easy to service, I'd set a reminder to pop them out and clean them all with isopropyl every 6 months as preventive maintenance. I'd ask the tech support if doing that to the fan sockets is advisable too.

Maybe you're right, but the fans have about zero dust on them. They basically never spin and for whatever reason, this room/PC stays super clean. I am pretty sure I could have taken the card out and you'd struggle to know its been used.

If they are that fragile, they'd be broken all over the place.

So yeah, I am leaning on bad fan batch OR a card that does weird stuff to them over time. If we are back in this boat in January its probably the card :/

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If we are back in this boat in January its probably the card :/

What mechanism would underlie that hypothesis? It's burning the fans out?

 

[blckgrffn]

What mechanism would underlie that hypothesis? It's burning the fans out?

Yeah, that would be my thoughts. How about this - old fans were spinning up to ~3000+ RPM.

In my short HD2 game eyeballing the fan speeds, it looked like the new ones were hitting ~2500 RPM.

Hell Divers consistently soaks the GPU historically speaking, I'll pay more attention next time. Maybe the old fans just spun out of spec?

So is that the card overdriving the fans? Or is that just bad fans operating out of spec? I dunno. We'll see.