Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

just find the fet or transister that sits between the fan and the power/ground rail.
then replace it with a jumper.

Not a good idea to run the fan at 100%.

Most modern video cards tend to have shitty quality fans, especially the low-end ones. Even when fan-controlled, they tend to seize after a few years. The high-end video cards may or may not have good quality fans in them, so that's why I don't suggest doing this. Just run the fan at a speed where it is enough to cool the GPU, but not so high to cause the fans to wear out very quickly. Not to mention that running the fans full tilt will make the video card very noisy and also accumulate dust a lot faster. So in less than a year, your heatsink may clog up with dust and become useless unless cleaned.

[diif]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

What temperatures are you seeing ?

[stj]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

just find the fet or transister that sits between the fan and the power/ground rail.
then replace it with a jumper.

[momaka]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

For older hardware and OSes, RivaTuner is great.

Not sure what you would use for the newer stuff like an R9 380, though. Perhaps MSI Afterburner as dmill89 said.

You don't need to bump the speed up to 100%. Just enough so the card is kept cool.

Use GPU-Z to monitor the temperature. If it goes over 45°C, speed up the fans a bit. Ideally, you want to keep the idle temps below 50°C (below 45°C would be even better) and the load temperatures to no more than 60°C if possible. That should give you a fairly long-lasting card (though there is a lot more on that topic, but I will forgo going into that now).

[dmill89]

Re: Forcing a video card fan to always run at full speed.

I have a video card, an R9 380 made by MSI. The fans don't appear to be working properly. I'm gonna try the card in another machine, just to rule some things out. They spin sometimes, but not very fast at all. It's so slow, I could actually count the blades on each fan while it's spinning. If I blow at the fan, it'll spin faster than what it spins while it's powered on.

I understand some fans are off until they reach a certain temp, but these two fans never kick on. The PC hard locks when we stress it a little and when we tried removing the video card, it was soooo freaking hot, we actually had to wait until it cooled down.

I believe they use PWM to control the speed of the fans on video cards, don't they? Is there anyway I could modify the video card to get the fans to always spin at max speed? Two fans connect to a small circuit board. The circuit board just connect the two fans together and has a wire coming off that connects to the video card. Both fans have a 4-pin header, but with one of the fans, one of the pins aren't being used for nothing. I think that's probably the pin that reports the speed. It's probably just reading the speed of one fan, not both.

Thanks!

What OS are you using it with?

If you're on Windows the MSI gaming app available on MSIs site should give you the ability to set up custom fan curves or set the fans to 100% all the time(they will be loud as hell if you do). Just about every video card vendor has such an app these days (at least for non-reference cards with custom coolers, etc.): https://us.msi.com/Graphics-card/sup...l#down-utility

If the PWM controller is completely shot and software doesn't work you can always hard wire than fans to 12V but again they will be very noisy.

[Spork Schivago]

I have a video card, an R9 380 made by MSI. The fans don't appear to be working properly. I'm gonna try the card in another machine, just to rule some things out. They spin sometimes, but not very fast at all. It's so slow, I could actually count the blades on each fan while it's spinning. If I blow at the fan, it'll spin faster than what it spins while it's powered on.

I understand some fans are off until they reach a certain temp, but these two fans never kick on. The PC hard locks when we stress it a little and when we tried removing the video card, it was soooo freaking hot, we actually had to wait until it cooled down.

I believe they use PWM to control the speed of the fans on video cards, don't they? Is there anyway I could modify the video card to get the fans to always spin at max speed? Two fans connect to a small circuit board. The circuit board just connect the two fans together and has a wire coming off that connects to the video card. Both fans have a 4-pin header, but with one of the fans, one of the pins aren't being used for nothing. I think that's probably the pin that reports the speed. It's probably just reading the speed of one fan, not both.

Thanks!