Videocard Fan loose - makes noise

[sillious]

I have a 2 years old Athlon XP 3200+ and the video card in it is ASUS V9280 VS(VideoSuite) Geforce4 Ti4200 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X.

Ran pretty well for long time, but recently the GPU fan became loose and started making very bad noise as it rotates and wabble and touches the video card.

I am afraid to take it off as I don't know what will be the outcoume.

Is there a way to fix it, replace it, or take it off and run it without the fan?

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

 

[BlacKJesuS]

just take it off and re-seat it

 

[imported_Sincity]

What I have been doing on older video cards (because I am too cheap to spend $$ on them) or chipset coolers is to take the fan apart and peel the sticker that is hiding the bearing. I can't desribe it any better. Once the sticker is peeled, put a few drops of light motor oil, the kind you use for RC cars will work. Put the sticker back on. That should quiet it down a bit.

 

[sillious]

Thank you for the replies.

I will try the oiling approach first.
Remember the fan is at the bottom of the VGA that's parallel to the ground.
I think it's not the ball bearing, but the fins got slipped down a little bit over the time due to gravity and temperature variations (ASUS didn't do long term test on this) and that makes the noise when one or two fin touches the card when spins.

 

[beggerking]

why not just take off the fan? I think 4200 is okay with only a heatsink as long as you don't overclock it.

 

[KBTuning]

^^^^^^

this guy is crazy.. my Ti4200 still runs hot w/ the Thermaltake cooler on it...

dont chance blowing it up... either get a new cooler for it or get a new video card. if the fan is falling apart there is nothing you can do other than replace teh heatsink or th ecard itself w/ a newer model... i think that most of the cooling solutions for the GF4 Ti series are still about 30 bucks but if yu got a little extra cas layin around get a 6600GT... i think they are going for about 120 on newegg new.

 

[beggerking]

lol. I stand corrected.

But isn't it worth taking a chance since this card is worth less than a new heatsink+fan now..?

 

[Vinnybcfc]

buy a 2nd hand fan off ebay the card will be fine as long as there is thermal grease and you have seated it properly (touching the card and it cant wobble a lot)

 

[sillious]

If my other PC wasn't partially broken right now, I'd take a chance of taking the heatsink off. I know it's old, doesn't worth much, but still it serves the purpose. The system has been very stable as long as I can think off (knock on wood).

My raptor will arrive on Monday for the other PC. As soon as I finish setting it up with OS, I'll fix this one. Thanks for all your suggestions. I'll apply them and adopt the one best fit. For now, I guess I'll enjoy the buzzing - not!

BTW: I looked for heatsink for Ti4200 @ eBay & it returned with the result of a seller setting heatsink for this and he's asking buy it now price $42 and S&H $16 = $58. $58!@#$#! that guy must be out of his fr$#@#$% mind!

Excuse my French!

 

[justlnluck]

Not sure how this compares to a Ti4200, but I had a fan on a 9600pro that started making noise. I unplugged the fan and never had any problems. I ran the computer 24/7 for months without a hitch.

 

[amenx]

I dont know if all ti-4200's are the same, but the one I had had a thin metal cover around the fan so it was easy for me to take off and bend it outwards a bit so the fan no longer scraped it. You probably should take it off anyway just to clean it, the dust that fans accumulate is tremendous, so might be a good idea to take it off. Its pretty easy, just a few screws to undo, comes right off and goes back on just as easily.