Hi all!
I bought a VisionTek GeForce 3 TI200 last fall (one of the BestBuy $99 cards... still waiting for my $50 rebate!).... the past week I have been hearing a fan whine from my case. It has been getting steadily louder and louder, this morning it changed pitch to a grind. So I opened the case and checked. It's the video card cooling fan on my GeForce3! I carefully blew out the dust in the farn (not much), but it made no difference. The wine is annoying, but it goes away about 10 minutes after booting.
Question: does the GeForce 3 TI200 (not over clocked) absolutely need that cooling fan to safely operate? My ambient case temp is around 80 degrees F (according to the ABIT board's bios). I would just like to unplug it so that I don't have to hear the wine when it boots (very loud!). I would send it back to VisionTek for warranty replacement ("lifetime warranty"), but I don't want to be without it for the three or four weeks they might take to replace it (my backup card would be a Riva128, OUCH).
I even thought about replacing the fan myself, but I can't seem to separate it from the heatsink (which is firmly attached to the GPU). It's on there very tight.
So, should I get it replaced, or just unplug it and not worry about it?
Thanks
Brad
I bought a VisionTek GeForce 3 TI200 last fall (one of the BestBuy $99 cards... still waiting for my $50 rebate!).... the past week I have been hearing a fan whine from my case. It has been getting steadily louder and louder, this morning it changed pitch to a grind. So I opened the case and checked. It's the video card cooling fan on my GeForce3! I carefully blew out the dust in the farn (not much), but it made no difference. The wine is annoying, but it goes away about 10 minutes after booting.
Question: does the GeForce 3 TI200 (not over clocked) absolutely need that cooling fan to safely operate? My ambient case temp is around 80 degrees F (according to the ABIT board's bios). I would just like to unplug it so that I don't have to hear the wine when it boots (very loud!). I would send it back to VisionTek for warranty replacement ("lifetime warranty"), but I don't want to be without it for the three or four weeks they might take to replace it (my backup card would be a Riva128, OUCH).
I even thought about replacing the fan myself, but I can't seem to separate it from the heatsink (which is firmly attached to the GPU). It's on there very tight.
So, should I get it replaced, or just unplug it and not worry about it?
Thanks
Brad
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