Tried searching this problem and found plenty of people talking about the one fan cutoff and such, but not this particular problem.
Bought a second-hand Saphhire Dual-X HD 7970 3GB that’s in pretty good shape. Tested it, ran fine, then changed out the thermal pads and pasted. Tested it again, still running fine, but this time around I tried benchmarking and noticed the fans didn’t ramp at all. The card was adjusting the fan percentage appropriately based on Afterburner, TriXX, HWMonitor, everything I’ve tried, but the RPMs don’t actually change. This is true at 25%, 80%, and 100% fan speed, including manual override. The RPMs just stay at idle - I’m not at the computer at the moment, but I think it’s in the low 1000s. I’ve tried both BIOSs as well - they seem to be stock in that they adjust the CPU and RAM speed the way the card was supposed to upon release, but I’m still not certain someone hasn’t been tinkering with this card, especially considering how clean it was and fresh the thermal compound seemed to be when I took it apart.
So, am I missing something here, or is there something wrong? Fans seem to be fine - no bearing noise, no effort to spin them manually, plenty clean, and they’re plugged directly to the card with all wires confirmed intact from plug to fans.
Bought a second-hand Saphhire Dual-X HD 7970 3GB that’s in pretty good shape. Tested it, ran fine, then changed out the thermal pads and pasted. Tested it again, still running fine, but this time around I tried benchmarking and noticed the fans didn’t ramp at all. The card was adjusting the fan percentage appropriately based on Afterburner, TriXX, HWMonitor, everything I’ve tried, but the RPMs don’t actually change. This is true at 25%, 80%, and 100% fan speed, including manual override. The RPMs just stay at idle - I’m not at the computer at the moment, but I think it’s in the low 1000s. I’ve tried both BIOSs as well - they seem to be stock in that they adjust the CPU and RAM speed the way the card was supposed to upon release, but I’m still not certain someone hasn’t been tinkering with this card, especially considering how clean it was and fresh the thermal compound seemed to be when I took it apart.
So, am I missing something here, or is there something wrong? Fans seem to be fine - no bearing noise, no effort to spin them manually, plenty clean, and they’re plugged directly to the card with all wires confirmed intact from plug to fans.