4850X2 Fan Broken

[lankyjon]

I've had a 4850X2 for the last couple years now and it's run great. Recently though I noticed the temperature on one of the GPUs was higher than it should be, and it turns out one of the fans was broken. So, how do I fix this? There never were any aftermarket coolers for the 4850X2, and I can't leave it as it is right now. It's idling at 90C without any load. Help?

 

[lankyjon]

Anyone have any ideas? I'm thinking maybe water cooling, but I don't know if it would be worth the price at that point. Still, I don't want to junk the card, as it still works perfectly.

 

[blade061188]

Hi lankyjon,

In what sense is the fan broken? if you are idling at 90C, it makes me think that the heatsink has bad contact with the GPU. The fan may be broken as well, but even passive cooling should keep it lower than 90C when Idle.

Are you comfortable removing the heatsink? I would first remove the heatsink and clean everything up with some rubbing alcohol, then re-apply thermal paste to the GPUs and re-seat the heatsink.

If the fan is also broken (not spinning) I would clean out the bearing/motor area with compressed air. If worst comes to worst, you can remove the plastic shroud covering the heatsink and use case fans to blow air over your freshly re-seated heatsink.

let me know if you need more help.

 

[lankyjon]

Right, sorry I didn't make things clear. The fan is broken as in the head of the fan snapped off from the body, so it can't be used anymore. The reason that it's idling at 90 is because at some point my card must have gotten so hot that it messed up the thermal paste. I took the heat sink off before and the stuff was all over the place. I cleaned it off entirely, so currently I'm running the card with no thermal paste on that GPU (bad, I know). My computer is off most of the time at the moment though, and I'm not doing anything graphics intensive.

Currently, I'm waiting to reapply new thermal paste until I know what I'm doing to fix the card. If I'm getting a new heatsink, I don't want to have to buy more thermal paste. It should be alright though, because I'm leaving for a week today, so my computer will be off. Hopefully by the time I'm back I'll know what I'm doing.

I know there was a guide up somewhere about someone putting some VF900s on their 4850X2, but they didn't cool as well under load as the stock fans, so I don't really want to do that.

 

[blade061188]

It's a very bad idea to run without thermal paste. Worth a few drops of paste to not wreck your card. If you have a tube of it, there should be plenty for a couple applications. You don't need much.

If I were you, I would go for a low-cost solution. re-apply thermal paste to the GPU, remove the plastic shroud around the heatsink, and strap a couple of case fans to the heatsink.

If you don't know how to apply thermal paste, here is a video (music is somewhat distracting but the video is ok)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa9DhGMxt78

you'll have two GPUs obviously so you'll need to put thermal paste on both.

 

[lankyjon]

Well, I'm away for the week, so for now the computer is sitting there not doing anything. 'll get the thermal paste sot hat when I'm back I can put it on right away. (The thermal paste on the other gpu is doing just fine, and the heatsink's are separate so there's no worry about messing it up.) In regards to the case fans, provided I do go that route, should I be blowing air onto the heatsink or away from the heatsink? I imagine onto, but I want to check. (I suppose I could always just see what cools better myself...)

 

[blade061188]

Yea, you will want the air to move through the fins of the heatsink (so pointed towards). But yea, you could experiment for yourself as well.

Update once you have tried that.

 

[lankyjon]

Finally back and the fan and paste are in. It runs at about 90 under full load, which is more than the 70 or 80 of the other gpu, but within the range of being usable. I'll only be running it for two more months before being gone for a semester anyways. THanks for the help.

 

[lankyjon]

Best answer selected by lankyjon.