Tiny little fans to watch

[turbosat]

No-not at ballgames, but those little fans they put in things like your fta receivers, computers, etc. Maybe this story will help remind somebody else to do the maintenance regularly. My computer has been locking up more and more often lately, and usually I just blame it on Flash and Javascript, reboot and go on. Anyone using 64bit linux can attest to the reliability of the 64bit flash plugin for web-browsers! And now, Adobe has announced they are quitting any further development on that, saying with HTML4 we won't need it, but that's another story.
Today on a whim, I decided to pull my old Nvidia graphics card and try another one I had, just to see if maybe it was problematic. THAT was it, I found that the little fan on the PC card was dang-near clogged up with dust and smelled like an electronic crispy critter. I've always kept the inside of my computer clean, dust and vacuumed out, fan blades clean-you could eat out of it! But the video card was on the bottom slot, and the fan being on the bottom of the card, I just never thought to clean that! Or that it was even there, lol.
So take a little time to check those things and it might save you some time and money. A can of compressed air isn't very much, and would've helped this time, had I used it.

 

[KE4EST]

Very True! So many people forget about those.

 

[FaT Air]

With proper maintenance the Edsel here, well, just purrs along.

 

[Magic Static]

I have an old P4 machine with an ATI Radeon X800 XT 256mb card. The fan wore out and became too noisey. But I actually managed to find that fan for sale in China, Alibaba. $8 shipped. I'm very happy about that cause finding a replacement AGP card today can be difficult. And that is a kick-ass video card for its age, scores 5.9 WEI Win7.

 

[Larry1]

My motherboard northbridge fan was running very slow so I was able to fabricate a heatpipe heatsink to fit it. The original loop for the fan to clip onto came out when I changed the fan so that was another problem I had fix. The new heatpipe did not require a fan to provide adequate cooling. To mount the new heatpipe, I ended up fabricating a small bolt, a washer with two holes drilled into it and wire to have something for the new heatpipe to connect to. The wire went through the motherboard (with some insulation on the back side of the motherboard) then into the small holes that were drilled into the washer. The bolt went through the washer facing away from the motherboard, through a small metal strip to hold the heatpipe and then a spring and finally another washer and nut. (sorry no pictures) Has worked fine now for a few years. If changing a heatsink mounted to a device, you may need to replace the heat transfer compound. If it has heat transfer compound, don't just wipe it off and use nothing. It is there to transfer the heat efficiently. Without it, the heat can build up and overheat your device.
Other times when fans have given me a problem, I have been able to either spray them with liquid silicon spray or light oil in the bearings and get then to work smoothly. Just make sure they keep working and do not stop after a few days.
Good advice from turbosat, check those fans.

 

[Cham]

The Asus video card in my system did not have a fan, just a large heat sink. When I switched to a large LED monitor I switched from analog to DVI output which the card has on board. Quickly noticed the monitor would just go blank once in a while, especially when viewing graphically oriented web pages, you tube, etc. Took the cover off the computer and found the processor on the video card to be extremely hot... well beyond anything I would call normal. It wasn't dirty really but I cleaned it anyway, helped a bit for a few days then problem came back. Anyways, I ended up fixing the issue by installing a tiny mag-lev fan right onto the heat sink using two small wood screws (wedged between the fins). Was able to plug the fan into a spare CPU fan receptacle on the motherboard so the speed is monitored by software. No problems since, nice cool heatsink/CPU now. It also lowered the MB temp by at least two degrees.

I shut down each system and clean it all out every month. Amazing how much dust can collect. Overheating components will fail!

 

[turbosat]

Great replies, thanks for the comments. I learn something all the time with these crazy computers and fta gadgets. This computer was built in a hurry on a Sunday about 4yrs ago, when the one I had suddenly died on me on a Saturday night. I had a printing job I needed to do on Monday morning, so I scrounged for parts and the only store I could find open on a Sunday to get a working computer going (or lose $175 and future jobs from that company). Ended up with a weird "gaming" motherboard with only 2 PCI slots, and 2 PCI-E slots that were intended for "ATI Crossfire" graphics. I knew nothing of those, didn't even know what PCI-express was, lol but I have one with a 64bit processor, nice fat power supply too.
That store forced me to enter the 64bit world way before I wanted to, now the thing just keeps going and going, runs cool , thanks AMD !! But I just stuck the old nvidia 256mb card in it and have used it ever since. I don't game so I never looked to replace it, until now that it has died on me, haha. Got a 1gb nvidia coming though, so this card will just run without a fan on its parts, if it gets hot and shuts down, so be it. Took the side cover off the case , so far so good.

 

[Tron]

Stuck or straining fans pull more current, and can cause problems because of that. I had a PC that wouldn't boot due to a small cooling fan on the case that was stuck and robbed current from the hard drive.