All-in-Wonder fan extremely noisy

[wallmg]

Model: ATI All-in-Wonder 9000 (Radeon)

I've had this fan replaced once while under warranty. It came back just as noisy. It has now gotten much worse. ATI/AMD doesn't sell fan parts for these cards so I'm wondering what the best solution is.

Can the card run fine without a fan. It has a shell of a small heatsink that the fan fits into, but I'm not sure if that would be enough cooling.

Any place I can get a replacement fan for this model?

Is there any kind of rigging that can be done to solve this problem; i.e., attach a larger heatsink without a fan; modify a different fan, like one meant for a CPU. (I've got a small CPU fan that was for a Pentium 1 chip that's about the same size, but the voltage is different, and it doesn't fit in the existing ATI card's heat sink. It does have it's own heatsink, however.)

Any other ideas besides just replacing the card?

Thanks.

[Qualitier]

This link has a pic, for anyone interested.

http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/aiw9000pro/

I think that your best option is removing the existing heatsink and sticking the Pentium's HSF with thermal glue if it's light enough. Years ago there were cheap solutions intended for low wattage vcards, I don't know if you could find one.

If the current heatsink is screwed, removing it would be easy. If it's glued it's more complicated and risky. I have read methods for that, but I've never done it.

[wallmg]

Thanks for your reply.
Couple of issues with the suggestion that I'm not sure how to tackle:
1. The voltage says 12V on the pentium chip fan, but it's something like 2.6 on the ATI card fan. Does it matter if the voltage is different?
2. The power connector is different, also. I could try splicing the old fan's power adapter onto power cord to the Pentium chip fan, but not sure if that would work.
3. Then there is the issue of removing the old fan, like you said. The fan is screwed into a sort of shell of a heatsink. But that heatsink is pasted to the video card chip, I'm assuming, because there are no other screws.

Any suggested appreciated.

Mark

[Qualitier]

Here's a pic of the area:
http://www.tweaknews.com/reviews/aiw9000pro/index5.php

Well, first off, there are cheap fans for low wattage videocards (it's not only a "years ago" product). They cost about $10-15 at Newegg and I've seen one here too. Possible reasons to get one of these is that maybe you can fit it better than your Pentium HSF (both physically and electrically), maybe it's lighter, maybe it covers less area (avoiding problems with the onboard parts close to the the GPU), maybe it comes with thermal glue,...

The voltage matters a lot. Undervolting the fan will make it spin slower (what could be good in some situations, bad in others) or not at all if the voltage is low enough (overvolting here simply isn't an option). Fortunately, you can connect the fan to some molex plug with an adapter (the yellow cable and the black one next to it carry the needed +12V). If the fan plug is too ancient and you haven't got an adapter, maybe you can work with the peeled cables (if they are thin enough you could insert them in a female molex and plug a male one to secure them). The card shouldn't "react" to the lack of fan connected (it would be the first one that I know of).

I was once able to find stuff for making custom molex adaptors in a basic electronics store (the kind of shop where you'd buy capacitors, resistors,...).

About how to remove the existing HSF I've found this, but I've never done it myself:
http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/PhotoAlbum5.html

I know that there're products for removing the remains of glue, but I've never done it (I've only removed non sticking paste, simply with ethanol 96º for disinfection).

[wallmg]

Thanks so much for the tips. I will look into them further.

Mark

[wallmg]

Update

Just a quick update, I tried spraying a WD-40 type substance (it's actually a similar product made by Valvolene) into the fan mechanics. At first, it didn't seem to help any. After about a day, the fan is now pretty quiet. Probably as quiet as a fan can be.

When I initially sprayed the substance, I read on the can to keep away from heat or flames. I worried about the heat generated by the computer and the card chip, but an ATI tech support person said those substances are usually fine with heat once they are out of the can and on the surface. I hope he's right!