Sleepyjack

My brother has a g4 ti 4600 and the cooling fan has died. Anyway, it's an abit siluro and the memory and chip heatsinks all look really pretty and so it has this intricate design, which makes it almost impossible to remove the fan itself and replace.

The card runs fine for standard apps, even some modelling in 3ds max etc but when trying to play games it just keeps overheating and so the systems hangs all the time.

Anyway, the card is over a year and half old now, so it's not under any warranty. I was wondering about what are some possible cooling solutions i could try in order to make the card work again.

I've heard a little about pci cards and that they can be used for cooling agp cards pretty efficiently, although i was wondering if anyone has any other possible solutions (i don't want to do much hacking/modding of the card though). Or if anyone has some knowledge or experience with pci fans for this kind of cooling purpose.

Although i am a little pissed that they make these cards look so pretty, who even looks a them???
It just means it's harder for me to fix, i couldn't care less what it looks like....
ok end of rant

thanks for any advice/info

Destrox

Well as for the "they make these cards look so pretty, who even looks a them???" I do, since I have a window mod on my case I custom made.

Other then that, I'd suggest contacting Abit. They have superior customer support and even thier forums could probably give you the answer you need. Maybe you could luck out and send your card in and get it replaced for free, the fan isnt ment to die.

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AxByC

goto radio shack and buy a fan/heatskin for a 486 cpu. it should be just about the right size. i used when i oced my tnt card back in the day. worked fine.

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Dilbert1234567

strap a new fan on it and it should be fine

al you need is air moving over the heat sink to take teh heat off. my video card (9800 256mg) has no fan, but the heat sinks (plural) are bigger then most CPU heat sinks.

i'd suggest a 60x60x10 fan, that ought to pump enough air for it.

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Sleepyjack

What would be a good method of "strapping" the fan on? how can it attach?

also has anyone had experience with the pci fans that go near the agp slot?

I am not too keen on strapping stuff onto the card itself, using glue or other nasty stuff which could screw it up. Thanks for the suggestions so far though.

I also can't really send it to abit, cause they're an american company and i don't think they deal with stuff overseas. Since it's no longer under warranty the reseller isn't concerned either, nor should they be really

Snakebyt

i made my own PCI card thingy.. worked pretty good... i was using a 7K delta on there, so a smaller fan may not work as wekk, but i wouldnt suggest a delta because they are just too damn loud

Ashton

Antec makes a fan that fits into a expansion slot... it would probally keep the card cooler than the stock fan.

Johnny Rotten

The PCI slot fans are primarily for moving hot air out of a dead space. If you want to cool your GPU, you will have to replace the current fan. A PCI slot fan won't actually be blowing on the GPU anyway--since the dead fan is in the way. If I understand correctly, what you're saying is that the GPU fan and the RAM heatsinks are of one piece. You don't actually need the RAM sinks unless you're overclocking, so those can be permanently removed without causing anything to overheat.

There might be screws attaching the heatsink asembly to the board. Plus you will have to carefully detach the heatsink from the GPU with a razor blade, because it's stuck on with adhesive thermal grease. Use a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol to clean off the GPU before attaching its replacement.

Removing the videocard heatsink assembly and cooling the GPU with a PCI slot fan will not be sufficient.

Here are some video card fans.

Edit: Also keep in mind that your local computer store or Best Buy probably stocks these replacement fans as well.

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longjohns

ok i know you're not interested in glue, but that's what i did to mine and it's working fine. i just cut up an old heatsink to the right size, spread some arctic silver on the chip, and used two tiny dabs of superglue in opposing corners.