She's breaking up captain! whoa, video card problems

[techwanabe]

I've got an ASUS Geforce 4-ti4200 in my rig. I get home this evening and I click between browsers and my screen goes black temperarily. So I figure something is whacked so I reboot. During boot up, the screen starts breaking up into little squares.

So I figure I've got a video card issue. I check the card and the fan is quit and it feels pretty hot.

First off, I guess I"m looking for some amen brother's on this. Ya'll think that's it? Hot card and causing strange issues with the display? Since the fan has quit and it's getting hot, what is the solution. For now I've got and extra case fan blowing on the video card HS to cool it down. Suggestions? Never replaced the fan on a video card before.

 

[Schadenfroh]

4200 with broke fan = very bad

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: techwanabe
I've got an ASUS Geforce 4-ti4200 in my rig. I get home this evening and I click between browsers and my screen goes black temperarily. So I figure something is whacked so I reboot. During boot up, the screen starts breaking up into little squares.

So I figure I've got a video card issue. I check the card and the fan is quit and it feels pretty hot.

First off, I guess I"m looking for some amen brother's on this. Ya'll think that's it? Hot card and causing strange issues with the display? Since the fan has quit and it's getting hot, what is the solution. For now I've got and extra case fan blowing on the video card HS to cool it down. Suggestions? Never replaced the fan on a video card before.

there are special GF4 coolers you can buy.... perhaps look into getting a Thermaltake GF4 cooler or something?
i dont think any other coolers fit... as for replacing the FAN itself... not honestly sure if its possible.

 

[Pete]

Amen, brother. Now contact Asus and see if there's an easy/cheap way to replace the fan. If you can see the fan is screwed on, that probably means you can unscrew it easily, so check if Asus can just mail you a replacement fan. the card may be old, but they may have a bunch of spare fans sitting in a warehouse gathering dust, and they're likely to ship one out to you for the PR value (the resultant warm fuzzy feeling will make you buy Asus again).

 

[techwanabe]

Thanks for the replies. I'll check with ASUS and also look into replacement fans.

To be honest, the fan on this card looked a bit cheapy and I half expected that sucker to quit on me. I guess I'm disappointed that the card depends on the fan so much that the display breaks up with the fan quits. Sure, I know the fan is there for a reason, but fans go bad all the time right. It seems there should be some kind of thermal shut down circuit, otherwise we could be frying equipment left and right when those fans go bad - and we all know fans go bad.

 

[InlineFive]

GPU makers should implement something like Intel's thermal throttling/protection to turn off the GPU if it overheats. It's something that's really needed since it's hard to tell if the fan is dead on your video card unless it is really loud.

 

[MichaelZ]

is it this one?

 

[techwanabe]

Originally posted by: i82lazyboy
is it this one?

Actually no. Mine must be a 4X version of ASUS Geforce 4 Ti-4200. It looks more like the in that webpage menu at the upper left with the gold colored fan.

I'm keeping it alive right now by blowing are on it from a spare case fan