Weird GPU fan noise

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

My GPU fan (Radeon 4670) is making really weird noises. It’s like it can’t get up to speed: it speeds up, then slows down, speeds up again, etc. It makes a pretty loud noise in the process.
Can these (kind of built-in) fans simply be replaced? Could the problem be something else?

Some details that might give clues:
I came home after 2 weeks; my machine was on all this time since I connect to it via remote desktop a lot. When I came in my room I immediately noticed this weird noise… Opened it up, noticed the GPU fan acting weird… Then I also noticed my power supply fan not working at all…
I shut the computer down, hoping it cools down or something. Then I couldn’t boot it at all, nothing happened. This happened to me a month or so ago, I couldn’t boot for an entire evening, but it worked the next morning, so I thought, no big deal, it’s not all dead yet.
I finally decided to try my old 250W power supply, and surprise, computer booted fine.
Conclusion: My newer power supply cannot handle long periods of runtime, and is probably toast.
My GPU fan is still making this messed up noise though.
Oh, and I’m monitoring the temperature on the GPU, and it’s fine for now, though I didn’t run any gpu-intensive game yet.

I tried to get the latest Catalyst + drivers, that would allow me to control the fan speed manually to see if the problem is the regulator, or the motor itself. But Catalyst won’t start anymore, it crashes instantly >=(

#2

In that kind of situation I would disconnect the built-in fan and attach a discarded netburst celeron CPU fan with the help of duct tape to the bottom of the card.

#3

Catalyst is not the problem, it is the fan itself. do you have an email that i can contact you at?

#4

You can send private messages using the forum system, just click on his username and you’ll find it.

#5

I know catalyst isn’t the problem, but it’s still ‘a’ problem :stuck_out_tongue:

You can contact me at samapico —at-- gmail + com if you don’t want to use the forum messaging

Take this you spam bots searching for my email!

By the way, I didn’t mention that I did clean the fan recently, and it was running fine after the cleaning.

#6

You don’t need to do that with gmail.

#7

You’re running a 4670 on a 250watt supply now?
Because since it seemed your other supply was toast, it could have to do with that it doesn’t get enough power.
I’d recommend getting a new power supply that’s atleast 400watt.

#8

My other one was 400W

After buying it, I went on some of these ‘calculate PSU requirements’ sites, and it turned out my 250W would have been enough. But yeah… this solution is temporary I guess. Next upgrade on my computer will most likely be a case+power supply+motherboard+cpu combo (basically a new computer :stuck_out_tongue: ), so I think I’m gonna wait before getting a power supply.

#9

Is it a reference design 4670 or does it have a 3rd party cooler. When i first got my 4890s they were non-reference ones by saphire, the vapor-X series to be specific, and i had to RMA them cause the fan was making weird sounds. Replacing the Saphire ones with two refernce design Xtreme 4890s by XFX fixed the problem.

#10

Not sure what you mean… how do I check that? It doesn’t look like a 3rd party thing to me, but that’s just a guess :stuck_out_tongue:

#11

Reference design looks more or less like this:

#12

Reference 4670:

Non-Reference (3rd Party) 4670 by HIS:

The non-reference ones will vary in appearance, tho, depending on the manufacturer.

Edit: damn ninja’d

#13

It’s manufactured by MSI, it looks like this:

#14

hmmmm… I completely uninstalled catalyst and the drivers, then reinstalled the latest version, and Catalyst works… and the fan seems to be a bit better. But it’s still way more noisy than it should be. With the fan speed controlled manually via catalyst, it didn’t seem like I was actually controlling anything, the speed seemed pretty constant.

#15

You can clearly see in that pic there’s only 2 wires going from the card to the fan, if that’s the case for you, then there’s no doubt that the fan speed is not controlled or controllable, it’s constant. The 3rd wire is usually what’s used to make the adjustment and read the fan speed.

#16

Oh… since it’s entirely possible to control a DC motor with 2 wires, I thought it was controlled :stuck_out_tongue:
That clears things up a bit…

#17

I think the fan is really about to die completely lol… temperature has some spikes… underclocked the GPU, that should help :stuck_out_tongue:

The card is still under warranty… Would be better if I just send it back to MSI, than risk voiding the warranty by taking the fan out, right?
Would be about 10$ to ship it, if my estimations are right on Canada Post’s website… hmm… I guess whatever I would need to attempt a repair would cost at least as much :stuck_out_tongue:

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