Sounds like a dead fan, honestly. I've never seen a GPU fan that would actually turn completely off, merely spin slower.

Take the fan out, sticker off the back and try 3in1 oil. If it doesn't work after that or is making a rattle sound toss it, and get another much better chipset cooler.
5500 you can do passive if you get a big enough cooler, and have good airflow in the case.

I agree, sounds like the fan is bad. I've never had an FX5500, but the Ti4200s and FX5700 I've used surround that timeframe, and they just ran constantly. Even on newer cards, all I've seen is fans that run at variable speed, but never shut off.

It's possible there's a problem with the fan header on the card, but more likely it's just the fan.
I recently burned out a fan header on a motherboard by connecting a seized up fan. It drew excessive current attempting to spin, and burned out a transistor. With unknown fans, always check that they spin freely before using them.

Thanks everyone. I may have another card I can cannibalize a fan from, and I'll see if the problem is with the fan or the header. These FX 5500s are nice cards for PCI-only Win 98SE systems.

I've saved a couple of laptop fans by using some sowing machine oil. They usually just need some lubrication.

My 5200 Ultra fan stops sometimes. I think it only happens with certain driver releases. Maybe early ones? I've actually seen it never start the fan and the card overheats.

Though it's possible your fan is indeed dead. But just saying I have seen strange fan behavior on this class of FX cards.

I agree that it's probably a dead fan. That said, my FX 5200 years ago was passive (the heatsink looked pretty similar to a Voodoo3); the 5500 is essentially the same thing. So it's not surprising it's continuing to work with the fan dead. I'd just get a passive heatsink for it and be done with it, unless you really want a small fan in the system. 😊

This is roughly what mine looked like, just for reference:

I never had issues with it overheating, and even overclocked it a little bit without problems.

As far as cards that turn their fans off completely, the only one I've ever observed is the FX 5800 Ultra, which will shut its blower entirely off when it drops to idle state (it's kind of unsettling the first time or two you observe it while the card is gaming, but logging indicates that it knows what it's doing, and never lets the GPU get all that hot (especially by modern standards)).

obobskivich wrote:

As far as cards that turn their fans off completely, the only one I've ever observed is the FX 5800 Ultra, which will shut its blower entirely off when it drops to idle state (it's kind of unsettling the first time or two you observe it while the card is gaming, but logging indicates that it knows what it's doing, and never lets the GPU get all that hot (especially by modern standards)).

http://forums.tweaktown.com/incompatibilities … loading-xp.html
There was some weirdness with fan control on other FX cards.

swaaye wrote:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/incompatibilities … loading-xp.html
There was some weirdness with fan control on other FX cards.

Very odd indeed. The only FX cards I've experienced/tinkered with/etc with "stock" fans are the 5800 Ultra and 5900XT - the 5900XT runs its fan all the time (it may cycle the RPMs somewhat, but it doesn't report RPMs so I can't confirm - it does sound like it gets louder running looped benchmarks though), and the 5800 has the on/off thing. 😊

I think this is the particular 5500 boxpressed has in question.

I actually had the same trouble with the very same fan apparently, and forgot as you can tell as the sticker is gone 🤣. I forgot the fan is upside down on this cooler.

Ordered a ton of those super cheap Zalman style knockoff heatsinks on ebay thanks to that other thread for my collection 🤣.
And will be replacing all the junk sinks like this on various cards, whenever they arrive.

That's my card, AlphaWing. I'm pretty sure the fan is toast, so I will pick up an inexpensive sink and fan. I believe the size is 55mm.

I believe that is the size.

The default heatsink is a joke, for the others you can't see it from the picture, but there are no raised areas on that sink at all, its basically just a metal plate with a small fan over it.
That 5200 Obobskivich has way more surface area then this sink 🤣 . No fan and it'll probably fail quickly.

AlphaWing wrote:

The default heatsink is a joke, for the others you can't see it from the picture, but there are no raised areas on that sink at all, its basically just a metal plate with a small fan over it.
That 5200 Obobskivich has way more surface area then this sink 🤣 . No fan and it'll probably fail quickly.

My AN7 had one of those sinks, where it's just a fan on a plate - fan died eventually and good gosh did it not take very long for the NF2 to get outlandishly hot. Stuck a fanless sink off of some old board on there and it was fine, ran much quieter than the 9500 RPM screamer, and probably was a little bit cooler too. 🤣

That FX 5200 never had issues as far as I know - I only had it for a few years, and then passed it along to someone else when I upgraded, so I can't say definitively "this works forever" but I never had complaints. No idea if you could find a sink that size for the 5500 but it might be worth a look. 😊

I did the same to my NF7-s. It came with a tiny little fan that died after about 6 months. Replaced it with a larger blue heatsink from zalman. Guessing the 5500 can run fanless too, with a big enough heat sink.

I think that must be the same "heatsink" that was on an FX5700 I had.. It had the thinnest possible little piece of shiny plasticy metal to stick a fan inside of. I guess it's supposed to look good. As mentioned, ABit had something similar on their NF7/AN7 boards.
A few years ago I picked up an NOS ABit AN7, and I just immediately removed and replaced the ABit HSF because I had already learned how awful it is and that it wouldn't last. So to this day, in the parts stash I still have a never used ABit NForce2 chipset fan assembly, probably the only one left on earth that works. 😀

shamino wrote:

So to this day, in the parts stash I still have a never used ABit NForce2 chipset fan assembly, probably the only one left on earth that works. 😀

🤣

Well at least you have the opportunity to hear the wonderful screaming effect out of that fan if you ever desire. 🤣

Honestly I don't get why such fans were ever popular for graphics cards or motherboards - to an extent I could see the "it looks good" argument, but I'm guessing a complete fan assembly with moving parts had to cost more than a cheap aluminum sink (which has been used on hardware since the dawn of time), and the mfgr has to know it has poor reliability over time. It boggles the mind that they'd let something like that get out into the open, but it wasn't just made available, it was actually pretty common there for a few years. 😕

Abit also used those on their Nforce3\Nforce4, I'm actually restoring my Abit-KN8-Ultra board currently, and am having problems with it getting super hot with a passive cooler I replaced it with on its NS\B, due to a very dumb Mobo layout. That even 4 120mm fans and 1 140mm case fans, do not seem to be able to reach.
Its a Deadzone around the NB\SB... Its an A64 so its really just a SB. Its expecting a normal style cooler with downward airflow from the cpu to generate the airflow for the SB, but I put a tower style Heatpipe cooler, since the ones with clips are actually still compatible AM2\3 are still compatible with socket 939 as a consequence too. So there is no downward airflow hitting the mobo from the CPU cooler.

AlphaWing wrote:

Abit also used those on their Nforce3\Nforce4, I'm actually restoring my Abit-KN8-Ultra board currently, and am having problems with it getting super hot with a passive cooler I replaced it with on its NS\B, due to a very dumb Mobo layout. That even 4 120mm fans and 1 140mm case fans, do not seem to be able to reach.
Its a Deadzone around the NB\SB... Its an A64 so its really just a SB. Its expecting a normal style cooler with downward airflow from the cpu to generate the airflow for the SB, but I put a tower style Heatpipe cooler, since the ones with clips are actually still compatible AM2\3 are still compatible with socket 939 as a consequence too. So there is no downward airflow hitting the mobo from the CPU cooler.

If I remember right Antec has a mountable fan on a "neck" that you can aim more or less anywhere within the case, which might be a good idea for this situation. 😊

I got a couple of those there to big to actually fit between the Coolmaster tower cpu cooler and the vcard, and my other brackets don't reach it either. Gonna have to figure out how to mount a small fan on the passive cooler, but its a pin type so thats gonna be hard 🤣. May end up switching it for another cooler entirely.