Cleaning a dual slot V-card

O

Otto Dafe

Regular
This is a probably a stupid question, but I've never had a card with an encased fan before, and the sucker needs a cleaning. I assume you can just unscrew the plastic case and blast the dust off the fan, but I'm a very cautious dude. Also, I suspect it's actually the memory overheating, as I'm seeing some green and red dots and bad vert co-ords when over-heating. I'm hoping I can safely remove the enclosure without the heat sinks coming with it.

Again, probably dumb questions, but any advice or anything special I should know would be appreciated.

BTW it's a Sapphire 1900XT.
 
Generally you'll find you can't dismantle the fan enclosure without taking the heatsink off the card. You are much better off getting a can of air duster, putting your finger on the fan (so it doesn't spin above it's spec and damage its bearings), and then use the tube to spray air from the outside vent into the heatsink and past the fan (ie, backwards to the air flow).

You can do it in situ, but if you take the card out and take it somewhere else, you won't just fill the inside of your case with the dust and fluff that has accumulated in the fan enclosure.
 
Davros said:
My god man what size cans are you using :)
Click to expand...

<checks can> 400 ml

You'd be surprised how fast you can get a fan going with a big blast of compressed air - and then a few days later it starts to get a rattle because you've damaged the bearings. The problem with damaged bearings (unless they are the fluid type where there's no metal parts touching) is that the damage causes wear to accelerate, and things go downhill pretty quickly. It's safest just not to spin the fan up with the compressed air.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Generally you'll find you can't dismantle the fan enclosure without taking the heatsink off the card. You are much better off getting a can of air duster, putting your finger on the fan (so it doesn't spin above it's spec and damage its bearings), and then use the tube to spray air from the outside vent into the heatsink and past the fan (ie, backwards to the air flow).

You can do it in situ, but if you take the card out and take it somewhere else, you won't just fill the inside of your case with the dust and fluff that has accumulated in the fan enclosure.
Click to expand...

Thanks man, I'm glad I asked because I really wouldn't want to try to reseat that 10 lb. brick of a heat sink. Kind of irritating they don't make them with an access panel of some sort--just a sliding top would be fine. Unfortunately I don't think I can get a finger on the fan because the vent is slatted.
 
Well that was a hassle, but it peeled 40 degrees C off the idle temp! For future reference, if anyone has a cooler block like this you can remove the fan enclosure separately, clean that, then blow air back across the copper heat sink, moving the dust out the intake (hope that follows). And BZB is absolutely right, never spin up a fan with compressed air.

Now, providing the ram isn't cooked, I'm off to kill some zombies. :cool:
 
Well, 90 as it turns out :LOL: (I'd been lax in installing tray tools), and yes, I did indeed fry some ram, which is to be expected when there's effectively zero airflow through the heat pipe.

On the bright side, the nice thing about skipping several GPU gens is I can replace this card with something 4x as fast for 1/4 of what I paid for this one. Only problem is, the way AMD has laid out those price points, you find yourself saying, "man, 80 bucks for that. Sweet. But for only $X more I could get me one of those bad boys. But if I do that..." And soon enough you're eating ramen noodles and wondering why you bought 2 4870 X2s and a 1500 Watt power supply.
 
I know it'll never happen but it would be nice if we could go back to the days of passive cooling, its scary to think my $400 gfx card depends on a $5 fan
 
Davros, that's why you should replace that $5 fan with a $200+ Water Cooling system.
 
Which is why you run dual $50+ water pumps in series connected to RPM sensors on your motherboard. Then again, you already know this, so I'm not sure why you commented about running cheap pumps.
 
i was vacuuming a metal framed display case once and i was getting shocks from the static allthough that would more likely be from friction of the end of the tube
 
What I do (though nothing says this is good) is hold the hose with my fingers in front so that the hose cannot actually touch (this is so I don't snap of Caps and such though) and hold the card in my other hand. I have never had a problem with it, but I might be a bad idea. With motherboards, I just vacuumed them inside the case still bolted in and grounded.

I did think about static electricity, but I always figured that in the mobo case it would be ok as it was grounded and in the card case... well I hoped it would be ok :)


On the display case thing it is likely the glass issue glass rods and fur and balloons and all that stuff.
 
The tube was plastic the cabinate had a metal frame and melamine (like a plastic coated chipboard) panels and was probably the tube rubbing back and forth across the melamine

from wiki
"Melamine is combined with formaldehyde to produce melamine resin, a very durable thermosetting plastic used in Formica, and melamine foam, a polymeric cleaning product. The end products include countertops, dry erase boards, fabrics, glues, housewares and flame retardants."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

I
Can a PCIe slot go 'bad' if the video card blows up?
2 3
Replies
40
Views
10K
Grall
G
W
44 Reasons I Don't Have Any Friends - A List of Games I Completed in 2010
Replies
8
Views
3K
kagemaru
K
O
Minor problems with the new rig
Replies
7
Views
2K
Cartoon Corpse
C
G
Europeans: your x360 impressions so far please.
3 4 5
Replies
99
Views
11K
Corwin_B
C
P
  • Locked
Will case size limit Revolution's processing capability?
3 4 5
Replies
96
Views
11K
scificube
S
Back
Top