Question Fan Control Issue on Used RTX 4060 Ti Eagle

[DragonFarmer]

hello , I recently bought a used Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Eagle (8GB) and have been experiencing an issue with the fans. The two fans closest to the HDMI ports (Fans 1 and 2) are either completely off or running at full speed (around 3000 RPM), with no in-between. The third fan operates normaly, adjusting its speed as expected.

I’ve tried several troubleshooting steps, including using msi afterburner for manual fan control, testing multiple Nvidia driver versions, and even the Gigabyte control center. However, Fans 1 and 2 still refuse to respond—they’re either stuck at 0% or 100% with no gradual control.
it looks to me Fans 1 and 2 share a single header (Header A), while the third fan has its own separate header (Header B). I’m wondering if it’s possible to reconnect Fans 1 and 2 to Header B (where Fan 3 is currently working fine) and leave Header A unplugged. Would this cause any problems, or could it potentially resolve the fan behavior?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

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[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

If the fans aren't responding to input using software, you might want to consider RMA'ing the card if you're yet under warranty. You could replace the fans yourself but if you're under a warranty period you will void said warranty when you disassemble the card.

 

[DragonFarmer]

i bought it used I doubt there is warranty! Also, do you think this is a fan issue or something wrong with the fan header?

 

[FallenKell]

The fan rpm speed might not be working. There are two types of this, the older 3 pin style fans and the newer PWM 4 pin style fans. The older fans were effectively analog, so the voltage was lowered, and the fan ran slower. The newer PWM fans are digital control with a pulse signal telling the fan how much time it should spend giving the fan power during a certain time-interval.

With the analog control fans, usually the only things to break was either the RPM sense connection (resulting in the controller thinking the fan was not running), or the fan's motor itself died.

With PWM fans, if something happens with the PWM signal, in theory the fan should revert to running full speed or be off depending on if power was being sent still over the power (and ground) pins.

Only way to know if the fans are really working would be to do almost what you said, but disconnect the 3rd fan from the second header and connect a single fan (one at a time) to that header and see if you can control it. Don't use any games or 3D applications to do this, simply use afterburner or similar GPU control software to manually set/change the speed (you should be able operate with just the one fan without causing damage if you do it this way).

If after testing, if you find out that the fans themselves work fine with using the second header, you have a few options. I wouldn't trust connecting all 3 to the same header due to power draw. You don't know the spec of that header and don't know if it has the amps to be able to power all 3 fans. However, you can make some customize cables, splitting the 2 PWM pins from the second header but still pulling the power and ground from the first header to the first 2 fans. These would then get the same PWM signal as the second header, but their power draw would be coming from their original header which was designed to handle these 2 fans in the first place (i.e. so you know it has the amps to power these fans unlike if you tried to put all 3 on the other header). Alternatively, you could put these two fans on an external fan controller (even an empty header from the motherboard). However in this case, you will want to use some third party fan control software to properly set the speed of those fans. There is one called "Fan Control" (https://getfancontrol.com/) that lets you make custom curves for almost any fan header/controller in your computer and can let you set them based on any temperature probe in your computer (so you can have a fan connected to a motherboard header use a temp of the GPU as the basis of the fan speed curve).

 

[DragonFarmer]

The fan rpm speed might not be working. There are two types of this, the older 3 pin style fans and the newer PWM 4 pin style fans. The older fans were effectively analog, so the voltage was lowered, and the fan ran slower. The newer PWM fans are digital control with a pulse signal telling the fan how much time it should spend giving the fan power during a certain time-interval.

With the analog control fans, usually the only things to break was either the RPM sense connection (resulting in the controller thinking the fan was not running), or the fan's motor itself died.

With PWM fans, if something happens with the PWM signal, in theory the fan should revert to running full speed or be off depending on if power was being sent still over the power (and ground) pins.

Only way to know if the fans are really working would be to do almost what you said, but disconnect the 3rd fan from the second header and connect a single fan (one at a time) to that header and see if you can control it. Don't use any games or 3D applications to do this, simply use afterburner or similar GPU control software to manually set/change the speed (you should be able operate with just the one fan without causing damage if you do it this way).

If after testing, if you find out that the fans themselves work fine with using the second header, you have a few options. I wouldn't trust connecting all 3 to the same header due to power draw. You don't know the spec of that header and don't know if it has the amps to be able to power all 3 fans. However, you can make some customize cables, splitting the 2 PWM pins from the second header but still pulling the power and ground from the first header to the first 2 fans. These would then get the same PWM signal as the second header, but their power draw would be coming from their original header which was designed to handle these 2 fans in the first place (i.e. so you know it has the amps to power these fans unlike if you tried to put all 3 on the other header).

Thank you for detailed explanation. If I proceed with testing, will I need to apply fresh thermal paste, or can I reuse the existing paste? I won’t be gaming during the test—just running a fan curve in Afterburne

Also, If I do not do any testing and simply swap the 2 fans into the working header Would the working header be able to support only 2 fans I know you mentioned the risk of connecting 3 fans into a single header but would 2 fans be safe enough ? As for the third fan, since it's blowing through the cooling fins and into an open space on the other side of the card, I believe I can leave it disconnected .




Like you said the other option would be to replace the fans.

 

[FallenKell]

If you need to remove the heatsink to access/reach the fan headers, yes, you should replace thermal paste. You may also need to replace thermal pads if you rip any. Be very careful during that part to try and avoid it as you need to know the thickness of the thermal pad to replace it with the correct one (otherwise it will not make the correct contact) thus not cool the memory chips or voltage/power regulators that they are typically placed on in GPUs.

The working header may only support a single fan. We only know that it has a single existing fan on it. The board designers may only have rated the header for enough amps to power the single fan or it might have enough for all three. They may also have rated it for much more, but we don't know that, and can only know it if you somehow get the board schematics, which I doubt are out there. As a result, the only value you know that the header supports is the amperage draw of the existing single fan that is currently connected to it, because if you put more fans on it than it is rated for, you will blow that header (and possibly more) on the GPU, as it may or may not have its own fuses to prevent overdraw...