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[Jun. 27th, 2006|11:27 pm] |
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Yesterday when I turned on my computer, it started emitting a vile rattling sound. I was afraid my new CPU fan had gone south already, so I unplugged it and started the computer for a few seconds (not enough to overheat). Nope, the horrible noise was still there, and quite obviously coming from my video card.
Thinking maybe things were just dusty, I took the can o' air to it (and indeed, it was dusty). This didn't really help. Now it's making a droning, unignorable buzzing sound, like zz zZ ZZ Zz zz zz zZ ZZ Zz zz.... I can even look up under the card and see the fan speed oscillating.
So, you were right, void*--looks like it's about to head south.
I mentioned looking at replacement fans, but those start at $20 and tend to be rated about 10 dB higher than my CPU fan, which would defeat the purpose of having gotten a quiet fan. There's a couple of fanless kits in the $40 range, but they look to (and reportedly do) require frustrating and delicate assembly. Plus, we're talking about a GeForce 4 Ti4200 here, which is darn near obsolete. The card probably isn't even worth $40, so spending that much on a cooling solution for it would be ridiculous.
Instead, I opted for a newer card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150107
It's fanless, which was my primary criterion. It's also at least as fast as my current card (according to Tom's Hardware, it's between two and three times as fast), which was my secondary criterion. Finally, it's not much more expensive than a good fanless cooling solution for my old card. Yeah, it's got a mail-in rebate, but I seem to have good luck with those, so that's no biggie. (My monitor, DVD writer, and hard drive all had rebates.)
I considered splurging (by my standards) and getting this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814125189
Most of the reviews complained about heat problems, though, so I decided against it. |
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