Sapphire Nitro+ 480x bad fan header

[Rev. Night]

I have a Sapphire Nitro+ 480x that has the stock cooler removed and using Arctic Twin Turbo II. For years I used the 7V/12V rails instead of plugging fan into fan header for PWM. The reason is that this pc was tucked away in another room, and I never cared to make it acoustically perfect.

I have had to recently move this card into my HTPC in my living room, so acoustics now matter. I plugged the fan shroud power cable into the fan header and the fans don't move. I can see UEFI/Windows just fine, the clocks are the same, and the temps are fine due to the huge heatsink. But when I start a game, or try to manually adjust the fan curve via MSI Afterburner or AMD Wattman, the fans no longer move. I have a Sapphire 5700xt in my other pc, I tried switching the fan shrouds. The 5700xt shroud didn't work here, and the 480x shroud (plugged into the 5700xt board) did work. So the issue is definitely with this 480x header.

I put in a ticket to Sapphire who said it was outside of their wtty. How can this be fixed?Attach files

 

[Ready4Dis]

I'm assuming your talking about the fan header on the GPU? If you have a meter you can try to check the voltage (being very careful not to short the pins!!) If there is nothing you can try tracing it back to w/e transistor it's fed from and see if you have low/no resistance between the pin and a spot on the board that it is fed from (through hole, transistor, inductor, whatever you can find to check) also check the ground pin to some ground on the card. Make sure you do any resistance check with power off. Hard to really give you to many suggestions without seeing it. It sure where you're located, if it's by 29856 I may be able to give you a hand in finding the issue, although the small size of the components can/does make it a bit difficult.

 

[Rev. Night]

Hmm that sounds complicated, and I live on the east coast. I read about getting a gpu fan cable to mobo fan header adapter and plugging it into the mobo. Then you use MSI Afterburner to create a custom fan curve. the only bad news is that this is tied to the CPU, not the GPU. Unless you are running GPU stress tests, aka just games, this should be fine.

guess this one is kinda screwed the pooch

 

[Rev. Night]

ok so I took off the fan shroud and the heatsink and i discovered that my pcb has not one but two headers. The first header, the top header, this is what the Twin Turbo II fits into. This is also what the 5700xt shroud fit into. So this header isn't working. But I see in old 480x tear down videos that the original 480x shroud went into the right fan header. Do they make conversion cable adapters? If so, what is it called?

 

[RazorWind]

The fan header on this card is the one on the left.

The pins in that connector are number 1-4 from left to right, in your photo. Here's what each one does:
1. Ground
2. +12V
3. Tach sense
4. PWM speed control

If you get out a multimeter, you should have continuity to ground (check the DVI connector) on #1, continuity to one of the 12V power inputs on #2, and some non-zero resistance to ground on 3 and 4.

With the card running, you should have +12V on #2, and an AC signal on #4. Do not probe #3 with the card running.

Have you tried plugging in this card's original heatsink and fan? This is sort of an oddball board design, such that few other heatsinks are likely to fit on it.

 

[Ready4Dis]

Hmm that sounds complicated, and I live on the east coast. I read about getting a gpu fan cable to mobo fan header adapter and plugging it into the mobo. Then you use MSI Afterburner to create a custom fan curve. the only bad news is that this is tied to the CPU, not the GPU. Unless you are running GPU stress tests, aka just games, this should be fine.

guess this one is kinda screwed the pooch

Lol, 29856 is in South Carolina... Anyways, yeah it can be a bit complicated, no clue about adapters. Running on MB header would be odd and you'd want to run it a bit higher than normal for safety, but I guess it'd probably be ok as long as you never stress the GPU and not the CPU? Stills they heat up and cool down at different rates, so a buffer would be necessary for sure.

 

[Meeho]

Lol, 29856 is in South Carolina... Anyways, yeah it can be a bit complicated, no clue about adapters. Running on MB header would be odd and you'd want to run it a bit higher than normal for safety, but I guess it'd probably be ok as long as you never stress the GPU and not the CPU? Stills they heat up and cool down at different rates, so a buffer would be necessary for sure.

SpeedFan can control the fan speed based on GPU temps. Not all MBOs (sensors/controllers) are supported, though.

 

[Rev. Night]

hmmmm yeah you are right