ATI 6950 fan is struggling (stop-starting)?

[skadoosh00]

Hi guys,

I came home to find that my ati 6950 1gb is making funny noises. The fan seems to be stopping and starting every 2 seconds, like it's struggling to stay switched on or something. When it's mining and making this noise, the Mhashes/s looks to still be stable, with normal accepts and rejects. Everything appears normal except for the sound it's making. My card is only 4 months old, with all settings still stock. What could be the problem?

I have been mining with it almost 24/7 for the past 3 months or so at around aggression=8 and haven't gotten any problems so far. It almost sounds like it's dying on me. The card still works fine on graphics intensive games and doesn't make the stop-start noise when I'm playing.

Anyone able to shed some light on this? Have I busted my card already?

[abracadabra]

sounds like your fan is failing
might want to look into replacing it before it completely locks up

[skadoosh00]

Failing after only 4 months of use? That couldn't be... Even older cards would be able to stand up to a lot more use than that... right?

[Hotdog453]

Fans are mechanical, and they fail. The fan mechanism itself will fail long before the silicon.

[deepceleron]

Fans like to fail this way when the bearings are shot. They start spinning up, and there are some nasty grindy stiction noises and the fan slows down.
Since sending it back for an RMA (unless you get an advance replacement) will cost you bitcoins, one way that you can give the fan some more life (depending on the design) is to peel back the sticker or plug covering the bearing shaft, and put a drop of thin lubricant (like 3-in-1 oil, transmission fluid) on the shaft and circlip without making a mess, and then put the sticker back on. Spin it around a bit so gravity helps it penetrate. Fire the card back up and mine away.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Failing after only 4 months of use? That couldn't be... Even older cards would be able to stand up to a lot more use than that... right?

Had a fan on a brand new 5870 fail within 3 weeks.. So yes it's possible.

Then I have cards which are 2 years old and still work fine at high fan speeds 24/7.

[Starcraftman]

I have a friend with a GTX 480 that does exactly what you are describing when the temperature gets past 100c. You should check the temperature of the gpu when it is at load.

[skadoosh00]

Thanks for the advice guys. For now I've temporarily fixed the problem by (finally) installing MSI Afterburner and reducing the memory clock to 600Mhz and keeping the fans running at only 74% (it stop-starts at 75%). Temperature seems to be stable at 75C, and the fans run smoothly now. I'll look into replacing them one day