What is causing my 5850's fan to sound like a wood chipper?

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
It could be that the fan on it is starting to go. It shouldn't be because the card is so new but there is no such things as a perfect manufacturing process. At least you may have an excuse to get an aftermarket cooler, which in turn should give you more overclocking headroom if you're into that.
 

DarkStarr

Tech Monkey
yea sounds like your fan may not be running right XD and amazing accuracy at describing the sound, it really does sound like a wood chipper. Oh and yea just gives an excuse to buy it a new cooler lol.
 
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Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
Sounds like the deathcry of a sleeve bearing fan, all too common on GPU's.... they give you a decent heatsink but skimp on the fan, oh well.
 

Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
XFX is pretty good with their RMA I hear. They throw cards at people like it's going out of style.

User: Hello, XFX? I sneezed.
XFX: Here's a card!
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Sounds like the deathcry of a sleeve bearing fan, all too common on GPU's.... they give you a decent heatsink but skimp on the fan, oh well.

It does sound like it, but nonetheless it shouldn't happen on a new 5850...

Killem2, glad you're RMA'ing the thing. Better to replace it before that fan potentially fails and the card cooks itself.
 

Tharic-Nar

Senior Editor
Staff member
Moderator
It shouldn't happen, but it does, quite frequently. I've had 2 or 3 cards over the years whereby i've had the fan die. It is usually on the larger fans, over 40mm, when they can degrade pretty quickly. If they are going to fail, it's usually at the 6-8 month mark with normal use, high use and your talking 3 months.

Sleeve bearings can't handle high heat, this mixed with exposure to dust means they can fail very quickly. The reason that larger fans fail is not just due to the fan's mass putting more pressure on the bearing, but because larger fans are put into hotter environments to push more air. Some models actually use a little bit of oil with the sleeve, and these tend to last longer. Most, especially the cheap end, are just simple polycarbonate washers put on either-side of the shaft, no lubrication at all.

If you're up to it (and the card is out of warranty), you could take out the fan, remove the sticker on the back, pop off the sleeve, pull out the fan and then give it a damn good clean, then use a little drop of engine oil on the shaft, and another drop on the sleeve. If the fan has been rattling for a while, there's a good chance that the shaft and fan has become imbalanced and this clean will only give you another few weeks of use, and it'll just fail again.
 

killem2

Coastermaker
Well it has a lifetime warranty so xfx will be replacing this often if it keeps doing this :p

Also when I had it out putting it away, i would spin the fan slowly and it would hit the top of the shell.
 
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Optix

Basket Chassis
Staff member
Oooh, that's a different thing all together unless it is REALLY unbalanced. Either way it's RMA time. The thing that sucks about RMA's is that the user has to foot the bill for shipping and be down for an extended amount of time.

In my utopian society RMA's would be sent back in pre-paid envelopes with a cross ship sent out to reduce down time.

Some day...some day.

***EDIT: Oh, and it would be illegal for hot chicks to shoot down computer geeks.
 
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