[SOLVED] One GPU fan stuck on max RPM, the rest work as intended

Oct 3, 2022
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I recently bought and built myself a computer about a year ago and have been using it daily ever since. For the most part there were no issues until a couple of weeks ago the GPU fans started acting a little weird.

For seemingly no reason at all, one of the fans (the utmost left one) starts spinning at over 3000rpm, whilst the other two are either off or spinning regularly according to the fan curves.

I've tried everything, updating drivers, resetting drivers, updating firmware, never had any overclocking or "tweaking" done to the card (the way it came out the box is the way it's always been running in my pc) and I've also tried using software like MSI Afterburner to manually set the curves and speed statically and that had no effect whatsoever. I've also monitored what apps I use and when the fan gets stuck and there's seemingly no pattern. One day it just ramps up when I'm casually watching youtube, the other I can be running a game on Ultra settings for hours on end and it never gets stuck. Just a few minutes ago even, the fan got stuck as I was watching a movie and when I opened up a new tab on the browser, the fan stopped spinning and went back to normal curve function (which at this usage is full fan-stop).

I've also checked power consumption, the card is only drawing 40-50W of power when the fan is stuck, so it doesn't seem to be any weird power delivery issue or a PSU issue. I can also confirm this isn't really a temperature issue since like I said, this is completely random. Sometimes I'm at idle looking at my wallpaper, sitting at 40-45ºC, and it ramps up. Sometimes when I'm mid games at 60-75ºC it doesn't get stuck and goes back to fan-stop when the game is closed and temperatures drop, or vice-versa. Hell, sometimes (if I restart the PC soon after the fans get stuck) the entire PC just already starts with the fan locked at 3k rpm and the card hasn't even reached 40ºC. There's really no logical pattern here.

It doesn't seem to be impacting anything functionally, I don't notice any frame drops or stuttering/tearing while I'm playing games and the fans are stuck, or really notice any difference at all. If I hadn't recently changed from my old noise-cancelling headphones, I wouldn't even have noticed this problem at all. The only thing that gave it away and made me aware of this was the slightly louder fan noise coming from my PC that I wasn't used to before.

I think the only thing left to try is to re-seat the card and all but I have a feeling that won't do much to solve the problem, just a "turn it off and on again" type of fix. I really want to find a proper solution to this since this PC is still quite new and I wouldn't want to have to switch parts just yet, much less a component as important (and expensive ) as the GPU. On top of that I also really hope I don't have to RMA this as my rig has an AMD R7 5800X without an IGP and I don't exactly have spare parts laying around to be able to use while I wait for the whole process, and this PC is used for work. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

PC Components:
  • AMD R7 5800X
  • ROG STRIX B550-M Gaming motherboard
  • Team Group T-FORCE 32GB DDR4 3600MHz (2x 16GB)
  • Gigabyte AORUS RTX 3060ti 8GB
  • Crucial P2 2TB nVME SSD
  • Corsair RM850 Power Supply
 
Solution
When one fan starts showing this kind of behavior and the others don't, aside from replacing the entire cooler there is really never a "fix" for it aside from RMA warranty replacement.

If it was a slower speed that the single fan was at I could say it was actually a noise reduction feature because some cards are designed for the far left fan to remain running while the others shut off, but not at 3000rpm.
When one fan starts showing this kind of behavior and the others don't, aside from replacing the entire cooler there is really never a "fix" for it aside from RMA warranty replacement.

If it was a slower speed that the single fan was at I could say it was actually a noise reduction feature because some cards are designed for the far left fan to remain running while the others shut off, but not at 3000rpm.
 
Solution
Oct 3, 2022
2
0
10
When one fan starts showing this kind of behavior and the others don't, aside from replacing the entire cooler there is really never a "fix" for it aside from RMA warranty replacement.

If it was a slower speed that the single fan was at I could say it was actually a noise reduction feature because some cards are designed for the far left fan to remain running while the others shut off, but not at 3000rpm.

Sigh yeah, I was afraid that was the case. Really sucks that such a new and recent card needs to be RMA'd with barely any use.
Thanks!