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Hooking Vid card fan to different power source other than card itself

A

Aeridyne

Senior member
So I just got this nifty MSI 9800GTX+ from a gent on ebay. I opened up the package all excited to have a nice new piece of hardware but to my dismay upon visual inspection there was a problem.

One of the pins of the fan header, on the back side of the board where the solder connections are made must have overheated badly, the solder had been melted at least once previously I can tell and the board around it is actually heat damaged.

SO.

My best idea because I hate returning things and paying shipping to return and having to do it all over again, is generally to try and mod something and make it work anyway if possible. So my best idea since the board itself looks damaged, and apparently doesn't have enough metal there to conduct without overheating in time anyway, was to simply attempt to power the card's fan from a mobo fan header. The board I will most likely be pairing it with will be a GA-H67M-S2H. The board only has 1 fan header which is a 3 pin for SYS FAN. I could use that, but there aren't any settings in bios for the speed, so unless I'm mistaken, I don't think I would want to use that unless I used only 2 of the pins, the black and red. I also have a few molex connectors that go to 2 pin for black & red.

I realize doing it this way would most likely make the vid card fan run at full speed all the time if it works and I'm ok with that so long as it works.

Guidance please? Never attempted to do this before.
 
I would return it immediately if possible.

Not only is that card ancient, but it has obvious signs of abuse or neglect on top of it.

I can't imagine what you paid, but I am betting there is a better alternative as well.
 
It looks like this card was baked in order to reflow the solder. Common problem with G92 cards and it's only a matter of time before the problem resurfaces. Really bad form to sell it without mentioning that.

But you can't just connect a gpu fan to a mobo header without modding the connector to a standard 3 or 4-pin one. You might also need an extension cable to reach the header. The header on your mobo can be controlled but you will need to use Speedfan. Running a gpu fan at constant 100% will be pretty unbearable.
 
Of all the used cards to buy, I think used 8800's/9800's would be the last on my list. Those cards are notorious for failing and having to be baked in an oven to work again. I'd get my money back if possible and look for something else in your budget.
 
Instead of hooking fans to the motherboard, also consider a dedicated fan controller. They can be very slick and nice looking, and complement the front appearance of your rig. You can also get fan controllers with temperature probes, and then you just stick the probe on the video card heatsink, and the fan controller will automatically spin up or spin down the video card fan, so you never accidentally cook your video card (it can be easy to forget to "turn up" your GPU fan on the fan controller when you start a game, if you use manual fan control instead of auto temp control).
 
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