Bad Fan in my 7970

Darren

Darren

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Staff member
Anything I can do to fix a bad GPU fan? Above about 75-80 percent fan speed and it starts to make some noise. It doesn't sound.... damaging to the GPU and it's not all that loud so I won't bother with RMA or anything. My case fans at full blast are louder. Any ideas?
 
Replace the GPU heatsink with an aftermarket one, or find the same card for parts and swap the heatsinks.
 
voyagerfan99 said:
Replace the GPU heatsink with an aftermarket one, or find the same card for parts and swap the heatsinks.
Click to expand...

I'm not wanting to sink really any kind of money into this. Maybe a few bucks for a replacement fan. Are you able to get just the fans or is it all one cohesive unit?
 
You might be able to find a fan, but most of the time they're one entire unit.
 
Kind of what I figured. It's really not that bad so I don't want to spend much of anything on it. If it gets worse I might RMA it but for now I'll probably just leave it alone. Might grab a can of compressed air and blast it out to see if somethings hitting it.

Pushing on the center of the fan very lightly when at 100 percent load, and thus slowing it down, kills the noise. Interestingly it doesn't seem to be just one fan as slowing down either one gets rid of it. Would that mean anything? Also the card goes from being silent to a noticeable sound right around 75 percent, it's not just an ever increasing sound the faster it goes.
 
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I've noticed with my gaming amount increasing over the summer that the fan is acting up more. It makes noise at lower RPM now and is more frequent overall, although not really louder.

I'm pretty sure that this card was RMA'd for a bad fan in the past and it's acting up again. It's really not too bad but it just concerns me more than anything else that it'll get worse and quit altogether. Temperatures are still good though. Should I have anything to worry about?
 
That progressive failure though. Since it's getting noticeably worse I'd see if they can give you an advanced replacement RMA.

Is it the reference design for the 7970?
 
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