red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-11, 09:22:

- these fans could be lubed to run smoothly again but there's not many tutorials on how to open a fan without breaking it. I actually broke a fin trying to dismantle one yesterday (luckily it was an old dud I was practising on). Is it even worth doing?

Pixel Pipes has a video where he cleans and lubricates a Power VR Kyro fan. I wholeheartedly recommend watching the entire video, but if you want to skip to the fan cleaning part, it starts around the 10 minute mark.

Is it worth doing this? From my experience, it depends on the overall condition of the fan. I've done this on 6 cards and it helped with 4 of them. The fans on the last two were too far gone to be saved.

Once the fan is removed from the heatsink, there is generally a sticker on the back of the fan that needs to be removed.
Sometimes there is a plug under the sticker that needs to be removed but that is not very common from what I have seen.

The fan shaft is held in by a split washer (usually plastic that is just cut in one place).
You need something like a very small screwdriver or even better an xacto knife to pop that washer out.

You should then be able to remove the fan shaft and clean any dried up oil out. A tissue or paper towel and alcohol work well. You just need to twist up a corner of whatever you are using, wet it with alcohol and then work it though the shaft hole.

I also clean any dirt off the fan blades and also clean the fan shaft itself.

Once everything is clean, I use a tooth pick and get a small drop of Mobile 1 full synthetic engine oil (10w-30) and oil the bearings (if the fan has ball bearings).

If it is a lame sleeve bearing, I will put a tiny bit of oil in the shaft hole and on the shaft. Install the fan back onto the motor and get the clip washer back on.

Then I usually use the toothpick to add a tiny drop of oil to the end of the shaft where the washer clip is.

Then the sticker goes back on IF the adhesive is still good.

If the adhesive on the sticker is bad or came off when the sticker was removed, I cut a piece of aluminum tape and use it to cover the hole.

Install the fan back onto the heatsink and you should be good to go.

I have recently been discovering the merits of a flood and soak method, that is when fans seem too tight that a drop of oil won't get them moving, just load them up and leave them sitting for a while, let it soak in. Often the original lube has gone very gummy with age and heat, needs a while to dissolve... then next day rotate them see if it loosened up any, if not enough, add more oil, leave to sit again.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-03-11, 09:34:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-11, 09:22:

- these fans could be lubed to run smoothly again but there's not many tutorials on how to open a fan without breaking it. I actually broke a fin trying to dismantle one yesterday (luckily it was an old dud I was practising on). Is it even worth doing?

Pixel Pipes has a video where he cleans and lubricates a Power VR Kyro fan. I wholeheartedly recommend watching the entire video, but if you want to skip to the fan cleaning part, it starts around the 10 minute mark.

Is it worth doing this? From my experience, it depends on the overall condition of the fan. I've done this on 6 cards and it helped with 4 of them. The fans on the last two were too far gone to be saved.

I followed that video but ignored the "don't remove plastic clip" part since it just made too much noise. I first soaked the clip in oil however to make it less fragile and it neatly came off and went back on.

The fan is a lot less noisy but isn't quite there yet. I think it has seen its best days - when the new fan arrives I'll remove the old one and mount the new one on top of the heat sink. It should be both quieter AND way more powerful.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-03-11, 20:44:

I have recently been discovering the merits of a flood and soak method, that is when fans seem too tight that a drop of oil won't get them moving, just load them up and leave them sitting for a while, let it soak in. Often the original lube has gone very gummy with age and heat, needs a while to dissolve... then next day rotate them see if it loosened up any, if not enough, add more oil, leave to sit again.

I tried that yesterday but that didn't do much for me. I really had to open it all up & clean it.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-11, 09:22:

- I assume that despite most of these fans being "inside" the heatsinks, mounting a superior modern fan on top instead of inside wouldn't harm the cooling aspect that much?

Those fans inside the heatsink are rather small and don't move a lot of air, so any modern fan you mount on top will move significantly more air, and over an exposed heatsink will cool much better than the stock fan. A good 80mm fan should work well and cover most of the video card, and you could opt for a slim model (15mm thick) to keep the footprint smaller. Your only challenges are going to be how to mount it to the heatsink or card, and how to provide power. Many of those small heatsink fans are powered by a 2-pin header on the video card itself, and that likely won't provide enough amperage to power an 80mm fan, not to mention you'd have to splice the connector, so you'll have to either run the fan power to a motherboard fan header or a 4-pin molex from the PSU. If you want more control with a PWM fan, connect it to a fan controller so you can adjust the speed.

Personally that's the route I'd go as opposed to trying to fix old fans, as they just wear out over time, and you get much better cooling performance. The only reason you might not want to do that is if you care about maintaining a completely stock appearance.

Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-12, 16:33:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-11, 09:22:

- I assume that despite most of these fans being "inside" the heatsinks, mounting a superior modern fan on top instead of inside wouldn't harm the cooling aspect that much?

Those fans inside the heatsink are rather small and don't move a lot of air, so any modern fan you mount on top will move significantly more air, and over an exposed heatsink will cool much better than the stock fan. A good 80mm fan should work well and cover most of the video card, and you could opt for a slim model (15mm thick) to keep the footprint smaller. Your only challenges are going to be how to mount it to the heatsink or card, and how to provide power. Many of those small heatsink fans are powered by a 2-pin header on the video card itself, and that likely won't provide enough amperage to power an 80mm fan, not to mention you'd have to splice the connector, so you'll have to either run the fan power to a motherboard fan header or a 4-pin molex from the PSU. If you want more control with a PWM fan, connect it to a fan controller so you can adjust the speed.

Personally that's the route I'd go as opposed to trying to fix old fans, as they just wear out over time, and you get much better cooling performance. The only reason you might not want to do that is if you care about maintaining a completely stock appearance.

Well I ordered a 40mm, 50mm and a 70mm so one is bound to fit the heatsink fins. The Voodoo 3's heatsink was perfect for attaching a fan but the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 have uses radial fans which makes it trickier. I'll have to rotate each fan and see at what angle I can line up the holes with fins that would accept a nice screw.

After cleaning the fan is a lot more quiet but it's still very audible and when you consider my Voodoo 3 with a 80mm fan was dead quiet ... .

Thanks for confirming what I believed though, that a surface mounted fan will work better.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-14, 07:51:

Well I ordered a 40mm, 50mm and a 70mm so one is bound to fit the heatsink fins. The Voodoo 3's heatsink was perfect for attaching a fan but the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 have uses radial fans which makes it trickier.

If you want a good heatsink+fan for a GeForce 4 Ti4200, try getting your hands on a Deepcool V65. It fits perfectly and is very quiet while providing ample cooling. Here's how it looks on my card.

That said, I'm not sure if these fans are manufactured anymore. I bought several of them a while back, when they were still available brand new in my local hardware stores.

I ended up adding a Zalman VF700-Cu on my GF4 but for the geforce 2 GTS i took the passive square heatsink of a geforce 4 MX applied it on the GF2 and then added a custom 50mm fan to it.

iraito wrote on 2023-03-14, 09:34:

I ended up adding a Zalman VF700-Cu on my GF4 but for the geforce 2 GTS i took the passive square heatsink of a geforce 4 MX applied it on the GF2 and then added a custom 50mm fan to it.

I bought a very similar one for my Radeon 9800 Pro. It didn't help much since that card died after a year anyway - those were powerful cards but REALLY bad lifespans. At the time, this fan seemed ENORMOUS to me compared to the regular ones.

Update: the 50mm works perfectly on the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 heatsink. Amusingly I'm not actually using the screws to screw into anything but by using three screws in the right place I added enough tension so that the fan is very snugly stuck to the heatsink without actually being screwed into anything. It's also dead center above the space where the old fan used to be - I doubt I can make it work any better.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-14, 11:42:

iraito wrote on 2023-03-14, 09:34:

I ended up adding a Zalman VF700-Cu on my GF4 but for the geforce 2 GTS i took the passive square heatsink of a geforce 4 MX applied it on the GF2 and then added a custom 50mm fan to it.

I bought a very similar one for my Radeon 9800 Pro. It didn't help much since that card died after a year anyway - those were powerful cards but REALLY bad lifespans. At the time, this fan seemed ENORMOUS to me compared to the regular ones.

Yeah i noticed that the 9000 pro series dies like no tomorrow, the XT series though seems to be safe in comparison, the whole heatsink is enormous in comparison, a zalman full copper keeps the GF4 4200 so cold i can pretty much overclock it to a ti 4600 level and still run it cold.

iraito wrote on 2023-03-14, 14:05:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-14, 11:42:

iraito wrote on 2023-03-14, 09:34:

I ended up adding a Zalman VF700-Cu on my GF4 but for the geforce 2 GTS i took the passive square heatsink of a geforce 4 MX applied it on the GF2 and then added a custom 50mm fan to it.

I bought a very similar one for my Radeon 9800 Pro. It didn't help much since that card died after a year anyway - those were powerful cards but REALLY bad lifespans. At the time, this fan seemed ENORMOUS to me compared to the regular ones.

Yeah i noticed that the 9000 pro series dies like no tomorrow, the XT series though seems to be safe in comparison, the whole heatsink is enormous in comparison, a zalman full copper keeps the GF4 4200 so cold i can pretty much overclock it to a ti 4600 level and still run it cold.

Yeah those Zalmans were pretty darn good. Looking back to the early 2000's, man I wasted a ton of money on hardware that only lasted a year due to overheating.

Around 2005 or so, the EU introduced a law that everything sold had to have a 2 year warranty and SUDDENLY they stopped making cards that overheated like crazy and they all got proper cooling. I'm sure it's a coincidence *rolls eyes*

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-14, 16:08:

iraito wrote on 2023-03-14, 14:05:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-03-14, 11:42:

I bought a very similar one for my Radeon 9800 Pro. It didn't help much since that card died after a year anyway - those were powerful cards but REALLY bad lifespans. At the time, this fan seemed ENORMOUS to me compared to the regular ones.

Yeah i noticed that the 9000 pro series dies like no tomorrow, the XT series though seems to be safe in comparison, the whole heatsink is enormous in comparison, a zalman full copper keeps the GF4 4200 so cold i can pretty much overclock it to a ti 4600 level and still run it cold.

Yeah those Zalmans were pretty darn good. Looking back to the early 2000's, man I wasted a ton of money on hardware that only lasted a year due to overheating.

Around 2005 or so, the EU introduced a law that everything sold had to have a 2 year warranty and SUDDENLY they stopped making cards that overheated like crazy and they all got proper cooling. I'm sure it's a coincidence *rolls eyes*

Damn now that i think about it...
It definitely feels like something changed, my old now defunct 9700 pro had a puny little cooler and died because of the heat, the GF2 though really doesn't feel like it needs a great cooler, something like a passive cooler with a fan is more than enough, especially without overclocking.

How can you tell whether a card died due to heat?

Putas wrote on 2023-03-15, 07:35:

How can you tell whether a card died due to heat?

When it's artifacting but still working for a while and then completely goes out during a long period in summer, it kinda hints at a heat issue.

Putas wrote on 2023-03-15, 07:35:

How can you tell whether a card died due to heat?

If you get garbled text during BIOS start up, it's almost guaranteed the chips got fried. Letting it cool down and it still gives artifacts = it's screwed. Sometimes it takes a while before it starts artifacting but if it does it even at low temperatures ... it's game over.

2010 iMacs are notorious for example for artifacting due to their crappy case design + low fan speeds overheating the graphics cards inside. At work we immediately turned it off, put a fan on the back and after an hour could use it for maybe another hour or so before it would artifact again. I later found a tool that let you increase the fan speed and POOF, problem fixed!

But every time it's starting to artifact, there's a chance the damage will be permanent.

It's important to make sure every graphics card with a heatsink and fan is disassembled, the old paste removed (it gets hard over time and doesn't conduct) and replaced with modern proper paste & if you can, replace or clean the fan too.