NV5 Silencer - Fan stopped ?

[soekev]

Anyone had their NV5's fan just stop? It started around the same time my computer started bluescreening on my PCI RAID controller aftering stable for months. Can't go safe mode or anything, had to actually remove the controller and reinstall on the on-board IDE controller w/ a PATA disk.

Anyways, I had an extra NV5 so I swapped that on and it still won't spin up... thought maybe it was a temperature thing but the heatsink is so hot that I can't touch it except for a second and then I gotta take my finger off or it will burn...

Could it be a power thing? I've got the PATA disk powered from the same Molex and the 12V leads that come off to the 3-pin are off the same cable.

The fan used to spin all the time and now, all of a sudden, it just doesn't.

 

[Nazo]

Have you updated your drivers just recently? There's a hidden option in the drivers that seems to control the fan somewhat. I think it was coolbits2 that revealed it. The option says "Fan always on" and defaults to off, so, I presume the drivers attempt to decide when the fan should be on or not. How accurate this is would depend I suppose. Personally, I always set the option to true figuring it's easier to replace a NVS5 than to replace a rather costly video card as those higher temperatures translate into shorter lifespan for the chips (ok, not a huge difference in most cases, but, why not let the dc motor which probably promises a bare minimum of 20K hours be the first thing to go?)

 

[soekev]

Ah, yes! I had updated my drivers recently to the latest 71.84.

I'll try adding CoolBits again on the PATA boot drive.

Thx for the tip, and I'll let you know if it solves the problem.

Pretty crazy to default the fan to off, tho!

UPDATE: added CoolBits2 but didn't see an option for the Fan

 

[Nazo]

Well, it just defaults to not always on. I don't even know if this is used or supported by all cards or what, but, if it is, that should mean that the drivers are telling the card to shut off the fan (to preserve it's lifetime) until the GPU hits a certain temperature threshold. Which is basically fine, but, the cooler you run components, the better they perform and last. I guess the logic is to make the GPU and fan last about the same length of time. Which is in the years after all. But, I still say my GPU should outlast my NVS5 any day. I mean, if all else fails, you can retrofit some sort of fan or suspend it above the video card or something when that thing fails a few years from now at least, but, getting a new video card will cost rather a bit.