gfx card making more noise, constant audio/video skips

pickarooney

My gfx card fan is spinning a bit more noisily these last few days. I cleaned out a lot of dust but it hasn't made much of a difference.

Additionally, I've been getting an awful lot of very short hangups in my system, when playing music or films, particularly if I, say, open a new broswer tab there's a short stutter.

Is there any chance a failing graphics card would explain both these problems?

Moon54

To me that sounds like a heat build-up or failing fan. Do the heatsink fins get very hot to touch?

If you have, or know someone, with a mini compressor, you could use it to give the PC and card a good going over. The compressed air should blow all the dust out. I do this every few months on my PC and it's shocking the amount of dust & fluff that builds up. Actually, my PC is noticably quieter after doing this.

If that fails, and the fan is still noisy, i'm guessing the fan is gone.

pickarooney

I haven't tried touching the heatsink but the noise is definitely from the grahics card fan - if I stop it with my finger the noise goes away. I've cleaned out the machine as well as I can with a hoover but I can borrow a compressor from work to see will it make a difference. I was watching a film earlier and I kept getting freezes of up to 15 seconds after which it continued as normal. I might try borrowing a gfx card, see does it make a difference or if I need to look at something else.

Solitaire

It sounds like the graphics card fan is about to bail on you, but that doesn't explain hangups in the OS/browsers etc. (at which point the GPU would be idling and generating very little heat). Have you given your machine a virtual hoovering as well with CCleaner lately?

pickarooney

In that case would an ageing motherboard be a possible cause? I've been having a lot of trouble with USB ports not recognising devices recently. Regarding the OS, it's a fresh linux install and the little freezes were happening before I reinstalled so I don't think it's a software issue although I wouldn't rule it out.

Moon54

I'd definitely find out if it's overheating, though.
I've seen some of those small type fans actually melt onto the heat-sink when they fail.

Hopefully it's only the fan that's gone!

pickarooney

What's the best way to check if it's overheating? It's a pretty good fan I have, no real noise from it and it spins away fine. So hard to know where to look with these things.

ED E

Tools will read the temp sensors on the card. I use "speccy" myself(Free from Piriform, the developers of CCCleaner).

Nothingbetter2d

pickarooney wrote: »

In that case would an ageing motherboard be a possible cause? I've been having a lot of trouble with USB ports not recognising devices recently. Regarding the OS, it's a fresh linux install and the little freezes were happening before I reinstalled so I don't think it's a software issue although I wouldn't rule it out.

usb devices not powering up can often be an indicator of a failing or underpowered PSU.

most usb devices such as webcams, headsets, and memory sticks, usb phone chargers draw power from the pc. if your psu is too weak it cant power them all and will shut off usb devices first before shutting the whole pc off.

pickarooney

PSU is fairly new (less than a year old) and should be well powerful enough for my system, but I suppose it's another in a long line of things I need to check.

pickarooney

Core temp is 33 C. GPU temp is 41. Three other temperature sensors are between 35 and 45. Fan speed is 572 RPM.

ED E

Run a game with speccy running and switch to it after about ten minutes, see how hot it gets.

You can also test the CPU with Prime95(Use Max Heat Testing) but thats unlikely to be the problem.


Those idle tempts are fine.

pickarooney

I don't have any games installed - to be honest the most CPU/GPU intensive programs I use are my media players and Firefox. I got a lend of a gfx card to test with so I'll be able to narrow down at least one of the problems.

ED E

Yeah, its not a heat issue then. Could be on its way out or something else. Have you checked for new drivers?

Is it vista or 7? Got Aero running? Try turning it off.

pickarooney

Ive changed drivers (Ubuntu 10.10) and I never use advanced visual effects. The noise has got worse again, so unless an insect has died inside it's probably not going to last long.

pickarooney

It looks to me as though the fan just isn't balanced right. If I spin it by hand, after removing it, it stops after a second and falls back a little in the other direction. It doesn't look as though there's much I can do myself to fix it though so I'll probably just get a new cheap card. As it's the second time a gfx fan has gone on me I'm wondering can anyone recommend a low-end nvidia PCI-e with HFMI output and passive cooling?

Maybe something like this?

http://www.amazon.com/Nvidia-GEFORCE9400GT-Tvout-Passive-Heatsink/dp/B001KU2RLY

Nothingbetter2d

avoid using passive cooled gcards...

i have two (1x ati 4550 and 1x nvidia 8400gs) and ive had to mount fans on them to keep them cool.

the nvidia 8400gs now has an old athlon xp cpu fan screwed onto it and it works great now i can run upto 5 clients of eve online at the same time and it doesnt overheat.

i plan on putting another athlon xp cpu fan onto the ati hd 4550 card this weekend as i found another fan in a drawer. the current fan i put on it is not that great (2cm x 2cm northbridge fan).