My GPU's cooling is losing efficiency

Yeah fan spinning direction does not matter UNLESS you spin them backwards on the third sunday, after labor day, and that happens to be on a leap year. (personal experience bad juju ) But anywho blowing them out with compressed air is a bad idea unless the source can be regulated to a low psi. I have blown apart a fan this way in my hand those plastic blades are pretty sharp. To avoid overspeeding or fan bursting I would suggest using the blower side of a shop vac using one of the smaller vac heads used for corners etc. Just enough pressure and a ton of flow to move the dirt/dustbunnies out of the way.

Just my opinion....

i personally just stick something in them so they cant spin at all to avoid any damage usually a zip tie

S_I_N said:

tell ya what y'all keep spinning those bearings anyway you want I will always hold the blade from spinning when I blow out my fans. And we'll see who posts about fans making funny noises first I'm just suggesting its not a good idea to spin them opposite from intended or faster than intended and that the better practice is to try to not allow them to spin as mentioned. Will it kill the fan and or bearing most likely not but it MAY cause issues with said fan.

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just a quick note... the fans on the gtx 680 lightning intentionally spin in the opposite direction for 30 seconds at full tilt upon start up. One would think a company wouldnt start the 'degredation' process intentionally ya know?

EarthDog said:

just a quick note... the fans on the gtx 680 lightning intentionally spin in the opposite direction for 30 seconds at full tilt upon start up. One would think a company wouldnt start the 'degredation' process intentionally ya know?

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Unless it is a conspiracy to lose the company profits from having to RMA cards with dead fans .....

:O them nvidias

bmwbaxter said:

Unless it is a conspiracy to lose the company profits from having to RMA cards with dead fans .....

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There!
Now we have a definitive answer.

Thanks everyone.

I'll apply new TIM. Listening closely to the fan doesn't sound like it's in need of substitution anytime soon.

Regards

!! necro !!

Forgive the resuming, but I must ask before I do wrong.
Finally got enough time to sit and do the work on my card, only to discover that the sinker uses several thermal pads. The thing is: they're in somewhat bad shape and I can't gauge their _original_ thickness. Going to buy new pads I see that their thickness can range from 0.5mm to even 3.0mm. Which to buy??

I searched for videos, tutorials, forum posts of people tampering with the very same card I got. Lot of stuff on the web. And all of them mention pads, and that they replaced them and that their card works better than before... but _none_ spends a word on the pads' thickness

Help?

I don't have a clue. I know Performance PC's sells various thicknesses.

You could buy a few thickness and then compare to what you have it's not expensive stuff.

Sorry, but that doesn't help me.

The problem is not about what to buy (I see by myself that them pads are cheap), rather which [thickness] to use. As I said, I'm unable to understand the original thickness of the stock pads. They are messed up, both compressed and teared apart. Even if they all were still in one piece, I have no caliber to make a precise measurement.

That's why I was asking. I can try a measure, say 0.5mm, but if then I close the box and the pads don't adhere properly to _both_ surfaces? It's not like I can reopen it just to see if it was doing the job right... that's how I got the stock pads ruined in the first place

Isn't there anybody who knows the exact measure that should be used for a GeForce 9800 GTX?

Get the .5 ones having replaced z few those will work fine