Associate
- Joined
- 8 Mar 2006
- Posts
- 15
Hi there, I'm basically posting to ask if anyone technically (or better still electronically) minded could give me some advice and possibly help solve a problem I've got at the moment. I'll try to keep things as brief as possible whilst giving the relevant information.
I've got an ASUS X800XT Platinum Edition (AGP) video card, about a month ago it started playing up causing system lock ups in more recent 3D games, and a quick check with ATI Tray Tools GPU temperature monitor showed it was overheating, badly. The temperatures it was hitting were obscene, I could expect a 45 to 55 degree celsius idle temperature and as soon as the card got a sniff of anything requiring 3D acceleration it would shoot through the 60's, 70's, and usually settle at around the early 80 degree mark. In one instance I was horrified to see it hit 96 degrees, thats four degrees away from boiling water and a particularly nasty explosion I imagine, so something had to be done.
I discovered the Arctic Cooling series of ATI Silencer products, the one in particular for my card was Silencer 4 Revision 2, and I quickly ordered and installed one. I took great care to install the product and was displeased to see just how shoddy a job the original stock cooling solution had been installed with, but nevertheless when the new cooler went on the card it was an instant success. Temperatures went right down, no more system lock ups, highest recorded temperature it reached was 62 degrees celsius and that was throwing everything possible at it as high as 1600x1200 with all detail settings maxed out on things like Far Cry, Doom 3, Fable and what not. So I was very pleased and obviously relieved.
So here's the problem last week was about the fourth week I'd been running this cooler and everything was going swimmingly, then all of the sudden I'm sat reading some game forums and there is a loud bang/pop noise, my monitor display changes to a horribly garbled pink and blue corruption mess, and this is all followed by a very strong smell of electrical burning. Worried didn't even begin to describe things. After very carefully and cautiously examining things to see exactly what had gone fubar I noticed that on the plastic shielding above the fan for the new cooler there was a horrible brown singe mark, I carefully disconnected the fan's power lead and cautiously booted the PC up to see if it gave a video display and sure enough it did; everything seemed to be working fine except that my lovely new cooler was now nothing more than a glorified (if very good) heatsink, there was nothing extracting the heat from that though. So I reconnected the power lead, started the PC back up and as expected the fan did not turn. Speeding the whole story along a little, I obtained a replacement cooler from the store I bought the original from via RMA, installed the new one noticing a few differences from the original such as a thermal interface pad for the GPU instead of a tube of thermal grease etc. and once again started the system up.
Unfortunately, the brand new cooler's fan would not turn either, so it appears that when the original blew out it must've surged along the fan's power lead and taken out the actual socket on the video card itself that provides fan power. Fortunately the fan itself was shielded by a thick plastic case so aside from the scorch marks on it, it would appear the video card was left unharmed outside of the fan power socket. I've had the system running a fair number of times since and am indeed posting this on it too, so fingers crossed, that is all that the bang was.
So here is the problem I have... without the fan turning all I have is a glorified heatsink, and pretty much any other cooler I put on there will be the same story if the fan takes power from the video card's fan socket. The connector seems to be non-standard too, it's not your typical motherboard/CPU/case fan connector. The connector on the board is female, it fits a small three pin male plug with the dimensions of 6mm x 3mm and wiring red/black/yellow, the standardised fan leads are around 9mm x 4mm and black/red/yellow. I was advised by some technical bods at overclockers.co.uk that I might be able to attacked the cooler's fan to the motherboard case fan socket, or the PSU via a y-adapter, so I ordered the extension and splitter leads. On delivery today, however, I noticed the size difference and wiring difference. So a standard lead is not going to work. What I basically need is any advice possible on what I should do, I'd really like to be able to power the fan externally from the video card to minimise any further expense since I just can't afford to replace the video card right now and it's no longer under warranty after several years, are there any other leads I would be able to buy which would convert this cooler's plug to connect to another power supply? Is there any other workaround that would get the fan working again without any further replacements? Since I cannot risk running any kind of 3D application at present for fear of the temperatures getting too high, and I have to pay close attention to the GPU temperature read out even when using the PC for general stuff like this.
If anyone could help me out I would really appreciate it, I'm really at my wits' end here and would be devastated if my only solution is to replace the card at cost. Cheers to anyone willing to help.
Photographs below:
1. Stock ASUS cooler (and lead)
2. Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer (and lead)
3. Standard motherboard/cpu fan male connector
4. Standard PSU female connector
5. Standard motherboard/cpu fan female connector
6. X800XT PE board with female socket for numbers 1/2
I've got an ASUS X800XT Platinum Edition (AGP) video card, about a month ago it started playing up causing system lock ups in more recent 3D games, and a quick check with ATI Tray Tools GPU temperature monitor showed it was overheating, badly. The temperatures it was hitting were obscene, I could expect a 45 to 55 degree celsius idle temperature and as soon as the card got a sniff of anything requiring 3D acceleration it would shoot through the 60's, 70's, and usually settle at around the early 80 degree mark. In one instance I was horrified to see it hit 96 degrees, thats four degrees away from boiling water and a particularly nasty explosion I imagine, so something had to be done.
I discovered the Arctic Cooling series of ATI Silencer products, the one in particular for my card was Silencer 4 Revision 2, and I quickly ordered and installed one. I took great care to install the product and was displeased to see just how shoddy a job the original stock cooling solution had been installed with, but nevertheless when the new cooler went on the card it was an instant success. Temperatures went right down, no more system lock ups, highest recorded temperature it reached was 62 degrees celsius and that was throwing everything possible at it as high as 1600x1200 with all detail settings maxed out on things like Far Cry, Doom 3, Fable and what not. So I was very pleased and obviously relieved.
So here's the problem last week was about the fourth week I'd been running this cooler and everything was going swimmingly, then all of the sudden I'm sat reading some game forums and there is a loud bang/pop noise, my monitor display changes to a horribly garbled pink and blue corruption mess, and this is all followed by a very strong smell of electrical burning. Worried didn't even begin to describe things. After very carefully and cautiously examining things to see exactly what had gone fubar I noticed that on the plastic shielding above the fan for the new cooler there was a horrible brown singe mark, I carefully disconnected the fan's power lead and cautiously booted the PC up to see if it gave a video display and sure enough it did; everything seemed to be working fine except that my lovely new cooler was now nothing more than a glorified (if very good) heatsink, there was nothing extracting the heat from that though. So I reconnected the power lead, started the PC back up and as expected the fan did not turn. Speeding the whole story along a little, I obtained a replacement cooler from the store I bought the original from via RMA, installed the new one noticing a few differences from the original such as a thermal interface pad for the GPU instead of a tube of thermal grease etc. and once again started the system up.
Unfortunately, the brand new cooler's fan would not turn either, so it appears that when the original blew out it must've surged along the fan's power lead and taken out the actual socket on the video card itself that provides fan power. Fortunately the fan itself was shielded by a thick plastic case so aside from the scorch marks on it, it would appear the video card was left unharmed outside of the fan power socket. I've had the system running a fair number of times since and am indeed posting this on it too, so fingers crossed, that is all that the bang was.
So here is the problem I have... without the fan turning all I have is a glorified heatsink, and pretty much any other cooler I put on there will be the same story if the fan takes power from the video card's fan socket. The connector seems to be non-standard too, it's not your typical motherboard/CPU/case fan connector. The connector on the board is female, it fits a small three pin male plug with the dimensions of 6mm x 3mm and wiring red/black/yellow, the standardised fan leads are around 9mm x 4mm and black/red/yellow. I was advised by some technical bods at overclockers.co.uk that I might be able to attacked the cooler's fan to the motherboard case fan socket, or the PSU via a y-adapter, so I ordered the extension and splitter leads. On delivery today, however, I noticed the size difference and wiring difference. So a standard lead is not going to work. What I basically need is any advice possible on what I should do, I'd really like to be able to power the fan externally from the video card to minimise any further expense since I just can't afford to replace the video card right now and it's no longer under warranty after several years, are there any other leads I would be able to buy which would convert this cooler's plug to connect to another power supply? Is there any other workaround that would get the fan working again without any further replacements? Since I cannot risk running any kind of 3D application at present for fear of the temperatures getting too high, and I have to pay close attention to the GPU temperature read out even when using the PC for general stuff like this.
If anyone could help me out I would really appreciate it, I'm really at my wits' end here and would be devastated if my only solution is to replace the card at cost. Cheers to anyone willing to help.
Photographs below:
1. Stock ASUS cooler (and lead)
2. Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer (and lead)
3. Standard motherboard/cpu fan male connector
4. Standard PSU female connector
5. Standard motherboard/cpu fan female connector
6. X800XT PE board with female socket for numbers 1/2
