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Problem Fans on Video Cards?
MobyDisk asks: "Both myself and my roommate have experienced problems with unreliable fans on video cards, leading to fried video chips. Most cards don't have full-size 12V fans, even though they put out a lot of heat. I've resorted to replacing the fans with cheap upgrades. A search for '"video card fan' on Google reveals lots examples of this problem as well as fan upgrade kits. I want to know how common this problem is. Have other readers experienced problems with video card fans? Should video card manufacturers start using better fans for reliability? Or do they just want us to upgrade next year when the fan dies?"
I bought a Diamond TNT V550 the week it came out and last February the fan finally died. I bought a socket 7 fan/heatsink and thermal glued it to the GPU. It works BETTER now with the extra cooling than when the crummy original was still good. Proves that proper cooling helps.
Sigs are nice guns
I've had pretty good luck with this place. Quiet and effective. I'm not affiliated with them.
About a year and a half after I got my Hercules GF2 GTS, the fan on it started spinning slow and making noise. Went to Hurcules's webpage, filled out a form (needs the serial number from the card), and 2 weeks later, I had a new HSF at my door, no cost to me. Link is here.
What perfect timing. I installed a Radeon w/ fan no less than 3-4 months ago and just a week or so ago, the fan started making a moaning/groaning noise cycling several minutes apart.
I read on Usenet a while back that groaning fan problems can sometimes be solved by removing its backing sticker and oiling the access hole. I performed this procedure for my Radeon's fan and the groaning noise is gone.
That's why you use DISTILLED WATER, which is a poor conductor of electricity, especially compared to regular water.
And why would your tubing get a hole? Are you mixing acid in with your water? Sheesh.
If a watercooling system is built/designed well, it will last a long while without maintenance of any kind.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
However I highly doubt that Mom and Pop are able to configure MoboMon, or even leave it alone if it came preconfigured.
This would be where a hardware solution would work perfectly. Someone just needs to come up with one (if there isn't one already; I just don't know of any off-hand.)
Also, the things you point out about water cooling could just as easily apply to air cooling. Does mom and pop know that they should be cleaning out their PC's case after xxx hours of usage? Or how to replace a defective fan?
If someone put together a well-built, well-designed watercooling system (perhaps already pre-installed in a case?) along with proper maintenance instructions, it would be ready for OEM use.
The only setup I've seen so far like this would be the Koolance cases. They come with all the equipment/tubing/etc. run for you. Just has a waterblock taped to the side of the case. You fill the system, install your hardware, attach the waterblock (same as a regular heatsink), and off you go. I believe the Koolance even has overheat protection built in (which will kill power to the system if it reaches a certain temp.)
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
I've taken out all the pishy wee 1.5" and 2" fans in my machine (removable drive bays, chipset, CPU and graphics card heatsink), and replaced them *all* with a couple of 4" or 5" fans. They're designed for 12v but I run them off the 5v rail. They're almost silent in operation, and blast a lot of air around the inside of the case. Everything runs nice and cool, and it's blissfully quiet...