Though I've not looked lately, there was an Ebay vendor that had a reproduction of that exact cooler, to the point where (assuming they are still available) you could swap the top plate from your existing one.

I installed those knockoff flower style coolers on both of my GF4 cards because I wanted to have the option of overclocking them a bit.

With some digging you could probably find just a replacement fan but I doubt you'd be able to get one for much less than the whole stock replacement cooler.

Vendor for the stock cooler is still active. https://www.ebay.com/itm/181188413754

I’d recommend you unscrew the cover, unscrew the fan, clean the heat sink, clean the fan blades, peel the sticker back on the other side of the fan, and add some sewing machine oil to it (for a ball bearing fan).

Reassemble, and it should be fine.

MSI seems to have used the same cooler fro their 4200. You can harvest fans from low-end graphics cards like the GT210. The screws seem to be at the right place.

The mounting holes of the coolers in question look far more spaced vertically than the ones on your GT210 picture

This one is still on sale: https://cosmostore.gr/products/computer-&-upg … -v50002418.html

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 07:11:

The mounting holes of the coolers in question look far more spaced vertically than the ones on your GT210 picture

I didn't take the fans out of the heatsinks, but looking them side by side in person they look the same. The wires are shorter on the GT210 fan though.

What i tend to do with cards i actually use - remove the cover, remove the fan and zip tie a 80mm or 60mm fan to the heatsink. Practically it works great - quiet and substantially better cooling. And it is completely and easily reversible - can always reassemble the card the way it was if needed.

Thanks very much for all the options all! Really helpful. I'm tempted to try all of those options honestly.

Archer, I really like that idea. Obviously not quite the same as I had in mind of keeping it stock, but I already planned to replace my noisy CPU fan with a Noctua, so maybe I'll just order two.

Will the card run with the fan unplugged? I have a spare 3 pin header on the board I could plug into.

sketchus wrote on Yesterday, 17:44:

Thanks very much for all the options all! Really helpful. I'm tempted to try all of those options honestly.

Archer, I really like that idea. Obviously not quite the same as I had in mind of keeping it stock, but I already planned to replace my noisy CPU fan with a Noctua, so maybe I'll just order two.

Will the card run with the fan unplugged? I have a spare 3 pin header on the board I could plug into.

The card has no fan detection mechanism, you can just unplug it.

sketchus wrote on Yesterday, 17:44:

Thanks very much for all the options all! Really helpful. I'm tempted to try all of those options honestly.

Archer, I really like that idea. Obviously not quite the same as I had in mind of keeping it stock, but I already planned to replace my noisy CPU fan with a Noctua, so maybe I'll just order two.

Will the card run with the fan unplugged? I have a spare 3 pin header on the board I could plug into.

Yeah, it'll work. The connector on the card is very likely nothing more than 12v power with no way to detect or monitor the fan. If you have a free connector on the motherboard you can use that, if you really wanted to - there is a way to connect it to the card too.

And yes, i understand that this is not the same as keeping the card stock, but... finding stock fan replacement is annoying, many old ones are half-dead and/or low quality to begin with and from purely practical point of view using a modern standard size fan is so much better that for me it is worth a bit of ugliness.

I use one of these Zalman coolers on my TI4200.

Thanks all.

I've tried to adopt a pragmatic approach to which hardware to use in my build, so I have a nice time period appropriate case, but after a number of IDE HDDs failing I've just moved onto SATA with adaptors, I feel like using a Noctua fan isn't the end of the world, and it's completely reversible which I like. I actually strapped an old CPU fan to my Voodoo so it's no real problem.

I may still purchase one of the Deepcool coolers, just to have one. I can't help myself!

I'll probably repaste the TI4200 too. Are they worth proactively recapping? Also, any recommendations for monitoring GPU temps inside Win98?

IMO "proactively recapping" is always a bad idea. Do not fix what is not broken. If the caps look good, are not bulging or leaking, thy are most likely good. It only makes sense to investigate if you have some issue.

Temperatures... is it even possible on this cards? Do they have accessible thermal sensor?

Also yes, IMO if you are building a system which is not a display piece for a collection but is going to be practically used it often makes sense to use some modern components. For me it is usually cooling, storage and power supply...

As mentioned earlier, these are inexpensive and do a decent job (definitely better than the stock one, though that's a low bar). I'd love to get a deal on a genuine Zalman copper one, but everyone I've ever seen listed was too pricey for me. This my GeForce 3, but you get the idea.

The GeForce 4 Ti 4200 does not have a built-in temperature sensor that is accessible via software.

Furthermore, from my experience, those cards run warm, if not hot. That means the whole PCB, not only the GPU. They have a fairly high idle consumption. So if you want to do your card a favor, ensure some good airflow. Using a larger active cooling solution, either by strapping a big fan on it or like Repo man suggested, a bigger aftermarket cooler with fan, should keep her running on decent temperates.

Don't bother recapping the card if there are no obvious damages to the caps and if there is no issue in the cards behavior. You'll put 20 year old hardware to thermal stress without any gain. Repair stuff when it's broken, not when it seems attractive.

You need to put a cooler in the backside also there you need to use a 1.5mm to 2mm pad to clear the small capacitors and transfer the heat

temp on the back went up to 65-70c

Aris wrote on Today, 12:04:

You need to put a cooler in the backside also there you need to use a 1.5mm to 2mm pad to clear the small capacitors and transfer the heat

temp on the back went up to 65-70c

No, you do not. This is pointless, does not help and creates risk of damaging stuff. PCB getting hot under the chip is both normal and a symptom that the chip itself is getting hot. Cool it better from proper side and it will not be hot on the back.

Archer57 wrote on Today, 12:28:

Aris wrote on Today, 12:04:

You need to put a cooler in the backside also there you need to use a 1.5mm to 2mm pad to clear the small capacitors and transfer the heat

temp on the back went up to 65-70c

No, you do not. This is pointless, does not help and creates risk of damaging stuff. PCB getting hot under the chip is both normal and a symptom that the chip itself is getting hot. Cool it better from proper side and it will not be hot on the back.

doesn't do harm as all you're doing is increasing the surface area for heat transfer

gmaverick2k wrote on Today, 12:35:

doesn't do harm as all you're doing is increasing the surface area for heat transfer

The harm is in messing with the PCB and all the tiny SMD stuff on it. I've seen way, way too many results of doing such things.

As for heat transfer - it will be negligible through that 2mm thermal pad and all the components on the back. There is no proper contact between this heatsink and the chip. Trying to cool the chip through all that stuff instead of doing it directly from the other side just does not make sense.