RANT: ATI Radeon Fan... #$%*(#@

...blowing the dust out of it with compressed air; no improvement.

Mass-Air-GPU Heatsink System $55.00
http://www.atechfabrication.com/products/specialty_products.htm

its at the bottom of the page

Silent, high performance heatsink system
Works with ATI Radeon video cards
High flow heatsink with copper heat spreader
Formed aluminum high flow air duct
Two mounting screws with preload springs

Installing the Mass-Air GPU Heatsink:
http://www.atechfabrication.com/information/installing_mass_air_9000.htm

a) it's not a 9XX0-series Radeon card
b) that's $5 more than I paid for the card itself

It might inspire some fun hackin' around though.

-- Macinjosh

well, since it was in a B&W I figured that probably did cost more than the card itself... but, yeah... at least its sort of an "inspiration" point maybe.... i dunno... old socket370 (pentium3) heatsink and some aluminum/plastic/cardboard and duct tape? lol.

the card in my Sawtooth is loud as ****! so, i was thinking about buying this and cuting the case up a bit to make it work (couldnt be any worse than the dremeling that case has already recieved)

EDIT: BTW, nice avatar.

woot @ duct tape. Red Green would be proud.

The B&W will be with me for a long time. Maybe she's begging for some moddage? TY about the av...

Yum @ Sawtooth, and rofl @ loud as ****. Sawtooth case = teh s3xy though.

-- Macinjosh

You might be able to quiet the fan, at least temporarily, by taking the tape or rubber gasket off the back of the fan (if there is one) and giving it a drop of machine oil or silicone lubricant.

I bought an ATI 9800 Pro Mac Edition, not 2 months later the fan started makin all sorts of noises too for the first 1/2 hour then quiet down. I noticed that said quieting was actually the fan barely spinning at all.

Called MacSales to see if they could just send me a replacement fan. NOPE, must return card! Rather than going thru that I bought a simillar aftermarkey low-profile fan to screw into the GPU's existing fan mounting screws. I made an adapter to plug into the aux power connector (like for HD, etc). Worked like a champ for about a month. $10.

After that, I decided to get a better fan+heatsink assy. together. I visited my local PC shop and bought an after-market fan with cooler fins. The 9800's fan is plugged into the cards' PCB, no biggie to disconnect. removing the stock heatsick was a tad stiff with the spring-loaded plastic stand off's. BE EXTRA CAREFULL. =)

There's several mounting hole distances so find one that says it's for your card if applicable.

The new heatsick/fan assy also has the springloaded standoffs. Use the existing grease on the GPU if your card is still under warranty. A passthru connector is included with fan. For $10, it was a great fix, and if the rest of the card does crap out I've got the original fan/heatsink to slap back on for warranty claim.

I'd go with a new fan/heatsink assy. If your heatsink is glued to your GPU, try doing the prior fix by just swapping the fan.

I vaguly recall ATI making a heatsink with permanently mounted fan and the whole shabang was glued to the GPU? (orig ATI 128Pro 16MB AGP?). If it's like that maybe you can use a heatgun to soften the adhesive and carefully twist the heatsink free of the GPU. After scraping the residual glue-bunnies from the GPU with a razorblade, re-attaching the new heatsink can be done with heat-conductive dual sided tape or conductive [edit: conductive/thermal] epoxy (located at some electronic component stores - use sparingly).

Good luck!

-Dk

It's fixed up for now; I had a CPU cooling fan that was only slightly larger than the heat sink on the GPU. Attatched it, moved the ATI sticker (I dunno cuz I wanted to ) and it's cooler and quieter than it was before. It's blocking a PCI slot that I'm not using though.

Tried to oil the fan but didn't have any luck there.

Sometime later, I'll attach a different heatsink, or tear apart a low-profile smaller fan, so it doesn't block that slot. But it will have to bother me enough (maybe I'll want to add another card) before that happens.

-- Macinjosh