Why 3D boards SUCK

[Guest]

Benchmarks are great... they tell you how well something works when it is new. The new 3d boards available in the market place are awesome... amazingly fast. But they all have one common flaw that has caused me to leave the world of 3D acceleration behind. Its a flaw that no performance benchmark will ever catch. What could that flaw possibly be? Fans. 6 months ago, I built 3 new workstations. Each one had a GeForce256DDR. And each video board is now in the trash. The fact of the matter, is that the cheesy, low-cost sleeve-bearing fan attached to these boards is <b>absolutely</b> necessary! Unfortunately, they are also extremely short-lived. Folks... unless you want to open your case once a month and remove, clean, lube, and replace the GPU fan (you should probably be doing this for your CPU fan as well), you need to avoid these boards. Otherwise, the fan will die, and your machine will randomly lock up on you. Worst case, you fry the video board that you just spent $350 on! At the least, manufacturers of these boards should be supplying consumers with spare fans... and if they had any heart, they would use high-quality cooling components to begin with. Once upon a time, the only moving part in a PC was the hard drive... back then, I was excited at the idea of replacing the hard drive and having absolutely no moving parts. Now, things are worse. There are 3, 4 and sometimes 5 fans inside our beloved boxes... and if one of them should die... crash. Its a disaster.

 

[Guest]

yeah, I've got a lot of fans, but the video cards I get have hardware sensor and monitoring programs that will alarm if the fan slows down or stops and tells you if the video card is overheating.

 

[noko]

Thats what happens when you have mechancial parts that have rubbing surfaces. They wear. Without oil, grease and exposed to dirt and dust how can a typical computer fan last 5 years or even one year? Especially my Delta fan which is turning 7281RPM as I type this attached on my cpu heat sink. Some people don't realize that when you double the fan speed, the fritional forces go up by a factor of 4. Meaning much more wear and tear. This goes for hard drives as well. Hopefully by the time my fan(s) wear out I will be already on my next rig. If not then I may have to upgrade due to failure instead of need. Unless I catch it prior to failure. Luckily my Radeon chip runs cool and the fan attached is virtually for show rather then function but my next video chip will probably require forced cooling to survive.

So high quality fans could save someone hundreds of dollars in the long run. Another thing I see happening is the extreme overclocking that places the chip on the virge of rapid self destruction on loss of cooling. Operating chips way beyond design causing excessive temperatures even with adequate cooling the internal parts of the chips are running significantly above normal tempertures. So even a small failure of the fan could be catastrophic rather rapidly. A worn fan could also cause excessive vibrations which could cause fatigue failure of solder joints. My Delta fan vibrates significantly, I wonder if I will see a failure due to vibrations.

Usually a mechanical failure will give warnings as in noise/vibration prior to failure. So just by listening to the fan and noting any abnormal vibrations you may be able to note that something is wrong and maybe needs to be replaced or monitored more closely.

As for lubricating maybe someone else has an idea. The wrong lubricate or application could speed up the failure rate of a mechanical component.

 

[Guest]

I heard that if you put so silicon between the fan and the heatsink it will reduce vibrations. People seem to have no problems putting a drop of regular motor oil, I used Lithium Grease. It is an all purpose grease from automotive to marine and even home use. It is heat resistant and won't corrode.

 

[noko]

Thanks for the info.