Fan Failure
 

For the second time since I bought the card in December, the fan has failed on my ATi Radeon 9600 Pro. Its been the same problem both times; the fan operates smoothly, until suddenly it begins to make a grinding noise. Gradually, this grinding noise gets to be worse and worse over the days.
The first time, mid-january ish, it got worse enough that the card could no longer be cooled enought to maintain operation and artifacting, restarts, and other errors began to plague the computer. This all occured from a Friday to a following Monday. I thought I'd continue running the card until the Monday when the ATi headquarters would open and I'd be able to return the card myself for warranty service/replacement.
It took only three days to get the replacement (new, not refurbished) back through Purolator, and they included an extended 5 year warranty (up from three years) for my troubles.
Alas, on last sunday, the grinding noises started again. I took out the case from the cabinet, took off the cover, and started prodding the fan. If its seated one way, it makes a gurgling, almost harley v-twin like sound. Kind of bad ass, except when you're trying to get your taxes finished on the before the government puts me on their naughty list. When poked again, it will then make a high-pitched whine resembling a microwave when heating. None the less, I'm dissapointed.
Upon returning the card this time to ATi's head office, they apologized, and when they asked if there was anything they could do, well, lets just say, a private preview of the X800 isn't within the power of the Service Manager. The Manager said that I was just a very unlucky man, and that fan failures are not a common occurance. Alas, I'm biting the bullet, and I'll be back to play Battlefield: Vietnam by Thursday.
This is unreasonable failure, yes, but what can you do? At least they aren't accusing me of causing the failure.

In conclusion, have you ever had continuously bad luck with a specific model of components despite the amazing track record and previous experience with a companies other products?

Ive been hearing quite a bit about fan failures from that exact video card. However, I believe in all of these cases, the card was also from newegg.com so I'm not sure if ATI or newegg is to blame. Or maybe, just bad luck.

I have no problems with my 9800pro for what it's worth ;)

does the 9800 pro have a pretty beefy fan? Because the 9600 pro fan seems a little wimpy for its application, as in, about 4 cm in diameter and spinning faster than it should.

The fan itself isn't too big, but its not noisy either.

I cant recall where I ordered the card from but I specified a different fan than the default that comes with the card - I had forgotten about that ;)

I hope Saphires Radeon 9600 Pro doesn't have the same problem...I just ordered one :hmm:

You should replace the stock heatsink fans on your video card anyway, to achieve higher overclocks. ;)

Exactly what I was thinking. You should have thought of that before you returned it the second time. You can get much better heatsink/fancombos then the stock one, or you can opt for a large heatsink that doesn't need a fan.

Here are some options at FrozenCPU.com -

edit- Be careful, some of these might void your warrenty- Be sure to check with the manufacturer before installing anything

Yeah, I was looking into options for aftermarket heatsinks/fans, but I figured I'd rather get a fresh card while I can because of potential overheating damage. Also, if enough of these cards are returned with fan problems, they'll hopefully realize that there is a fault in their product. Besides, maybe they've fixed the problem, and the card I'll receive has a decent OEM fan/heatsink. And yeah, it will void my warranty, so I'd rather stay out of the aftermarket arena for as long as possible.
What intrigues me, is silent cooling. Are the solutions out there capable of delivering videocard fan silence without compromising reliability of the card? I have a fanless GF2 in this computer right now, and it can heat up like something fierce even if it isn't stressed. If worse comes to worse, and this happens a third time, that'll be my next course of action.

http://www.frozencpu.com/images/prod...res/vid-18.jpg

i have one of these on my 9800, i think they have a one for the 9600 too, its great.

Good God. That's a majorly large heatsink.

Yup. You'll notice it has no fan. Has to be much bigger to get away with no fan.