Video Fan Eating Machine

[Roraycr]

In 2002, I bought and NVidia GeForce 2 Pro w/32M. 6 weeks later the fan stopped working. I contacted the company and they sent me a new fan. 2 months later, the new fan and the card stopped working. This time the company replaced the card. About 4 months later, the fan stopped. Disgusted, I bought a cheap ATI 7000 (with no fan). In May this year, I bought a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9000 PRO w/128M. This week the fan went out. I've put the 7000 back in and sent the card back for replacement. 4 fans on 3 video cards seems like more than coincidence. Does anybody have any idea what could be causing this?
The cards are not overclocked, and because I run UD 24/7, the machine is always between 52 - 55 C, but never over except when these fans stop and the heat from the video card rises to the CPU, but even then 58C is the highest I've seen. Aside from this fan nonsense, everything else runs great.

[thePh@r@oh]

it might be a voltage thing. there may be to many volts getting to the fan and wearing it out....thats just my opinion.....also there may be some kinda short in the board.....im thinking the voltage is the key here.

[dunbar]

Fans usually fail due to the choice of bearing design inside the fan (Ball Bearings are best, Sleeve Bearings are usually kinda close in lifespan, but some sleeve designs are wicked bad), fans also fail according to position, and according to electrical overstress (running a 5 volt fan on 7 volts will make the fan go faster, but the life span is shorter for electrical AND mechanical reasons).

[ragtop]

I also have had a number of fans go bad over the past few years, but most of them just get noisy - only one stopped completely.

It seems to me that most of the Vid card companies use very cheap fans on their cards. It also seems like running the fans "upside down" (as they typically would be positioned in a tower type case) tends to shorten the lifespan.

I have used the Vantec iceberg fan as a replacement with good success. Its inexpensive, quiet, and does a good job any a GF3 or lower card - although its not adequate for some of the newer GF4 or above cards.

[Prexaspes]

Does your PC get exposed to a high level of dust or smoke?

How many other fans are in your system, and do any of them blow on the video card?

I like to add my own fans to my video cards. Using Arctic Silver epoxy weakened with a little regular Arctic Silver serves as a good, heat conductive thermal adhesive.

[Peter M]

Cheap fans, quite clearly. All those toy fans on chipsets and graphics cards die by the dozen. Wherever I can, I put fanless mainboards and cards into people's computers.

You can now move on to a fanless Radeon 9600

[Eladijaz]

Greetings,
I concur with peter M. Probably the choice of brand and a bit of bad luck. Bad voltages through the PCI bus, enough to kill a fan, would most likely show up with other problems as well.
What brands were they?
Regards,
Elad.