I just recapped an ATI Radeon 9700 AGP video card yesterday and was wondering what I should do about the fan. It is noisy and scratchy. Is there a way to lubricate a fan like this or do I need to just find a replacement?
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Fan lubrication?
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Re: Fan lubrication?
There should be a few screws holding the fan in place (usually three of them). Undo them to remove the fan and peel off the sticker. Some fans have a rubber plug under the sticker. Remove that and put a drop of oil in. I find that sewing machine oil works as does air tool lubricant. Don't use thick grease or WD40.I love putting bad caps and flat batteries in fire and watching them explode!!
No wonder it doesn't work! You installed the jumper wires backwards
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Re: Fan lubrication?
there was a topic about this a while back.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...highlight=wd40
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Re: Fan lubrication?
Follow kaniki's instruction on the thread he posted and you should be able to fix the fan easily. I've re-lubed a fan on a Radeon 9800 Pro and it wasn't hard at all. Since Radeon 9800 is only a model newer than Radeon 9700, I'm guessing the fans are pretty similar. If I remember correctly, there was no rubber plug under the sticker on the back of the fan. Also, you don't need to remove the heatsink to remove the fan - as c_hegge said, there should be three screws holding it to the heatsink. Try not to put too much downward pressure with your screw driver on them though, otherwise you might get the GPU core cracked.
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Re: Fan lubrication?
I'll go ahead and give the oil treatment a try.
As far as replacing the fan, it's honestly not worth it, as a Radeon 9700 rarely fetches over $20 resale. I just wanted this as a backup.
Anyway, I've replaced the 470uf solid state caps with 680uf, 10v electrolytics, and the card seems extremely stable. Next is time for some small memory heatsinks.
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Re: Fan lubrication?
Originally posted by 4tifiedI'll go ahead and give the oil treatment a try.
As far as replacing the fan, it's honestly not worth it, as a Radeon 9700 rarely fetches over $20 resale. I just wanted this as a backup.
Anyway, I've replaced the 470uf solid state caps with 680uf, 10v electrolytics, and the card seems extremely stable. Next is time for some small memory heatsinks.
You can try the lubrication as suggested above but having tried the same on
power supply fans it only gave me about 3-5 months of use before they start
to be loud again. Once the bearing is worn and wobbly it has gone pretty
much beyond repair. Oiling it gives you at most a few more months of "quiet"
life back.
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Re: Fan lubrication?
I've successfully relubed dozens of fans, including several that were almost completely seized up. In fact, I've never failed to restore a fan back to normal quiet operation yet. A few times I've had to repeat the process after the oil leaked out, and once I had to switch from oil to a light synthetic grease for a video card fan that was mounted upside down (to keep the lubricant from leaking out). The other thread referenced earlier gives lots of good technical advice for the process.
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Re: Fan lubrication?
I know the bearings are worn, not much I can do about that. The 3-in-1 oil offered some lubrication and decent noise reduction, but the oil is providing enough leeway.
I know this sounds stupid, but can I use lithium grease? I know it works pretty well with optical transport rails in CD drives, so why not try it with a brushless fan motor?
What have I got to lose?
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Re: Fan lubrication?
Originally posted by 4tifiedI know the bearings are worn, not much I can do about that. The 3-in-1 oil offered some lubrication and decent noise reduction, but the oil is providing enough leeway.
I know this sounds stupid, but can I use lithium grease? I know it works pretty well with optical transport rails in CD drives, so why not try it with a brushless fan motor?
What have I got to lose?
Originally posted by ArubaYou can try the lubrication as suggested above but having tried the same on
power supply fans it only gave me about 3-5 months of use before they start
to be loud again. Once the bearing is worn and wobbly it has gone pretty
much beyond repair. Oiling it gives you at most a few more months of "quiet"
life back.
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Re: Fan lubrication?
I second kaniki. While I haven't personally tried it, I don't think lithium grease would be a good lubricant. In my experience, almost any quality oil will do the trick. I have the Loctite synthetic lube with Teflon that stj referenced and it works well, but IMO no better than most of the other lubricants I've tried (3-in-1 oil, sewing machine oil, both conventional and synthetic engine oils, Slick 50 One Lube, etc.) As mentioned in my previous post, I had an excellent experience using SuperLube synthetic grease with Teflon in a video card HS/F last time and I'm thinking about continuing to use it in the future. I may also experiment around with various other light greases to see how they work.
I also fully agree with kaniki about the longevity of the relubed fans. They continue to work perfectly almost indefinitely afterwards. I've started preemptively lubing some of my fans with higher quality lubricants as preventative maintenance, hoping to head off future problems.
HTH
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