Thanks Kony for great posts
I have a Hercules Ti200 and had been worrying about that for some time.
Though it hasn't break yet. I believe it's the same deal with OP. The fan
looks like this:
http://www.hexus.co.uk/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0yNTE=
If it is a sleeve bearing fan, go ahead and lube it now.
The typical video card fan failure is due to running out of
lubricant, due to short bearing, heat, poor balance, and
that sleeve bearing fans aren't really supposed to be
mounted in a non-vertical orientation. It's amazing to me
that so many video card manufacturers either don't know
this, or don't care. Even funnier is that they use thin oil
that is incompatible with many adhesives used on the labels,
fouling the lubricant since these types of fans almost never
have a rubber plug sealing them.
Lubing it BEFORE it shows any signs of a problem, reduces
play in the bearing and eliminates the MUCH more rapid wear
that happens once it's bad enough to make noise. Even so, a
half-dead fan with appropriate lube may work fine again, but
may also need lubed more often.
Due to horizontal orientation, thin bearing, etc (all the
factors making them fail in the first place) the ideal lube
is not a thin oil but thick enough to almost be grease,
especially on an older, worn fan. If you don't have very
thick oil, at least gear (80) weight, regular motor oil
could be mixed with heavy grease to get proper consistency,
thick enough that it barely drips off of the mixing tool.
This seems like a lot of attention to detail for a single
video card fan but invariably over the years I've come
across many fans that were irreplaceable and needed an
optimal solution, in addtion to being able to get things
working immediately in the field. The right lube may make a
fan last at least as long, perhaps even several times as
long as the first 'round of service.
It'd be quite hard to screw the regular 40mm fan to the fins. And I am
guessing the fan blade part is prolly snapped into the mid axle in retail.
The whole fan is probably assembled in the tradition way of
*all* fans, that the blade assembly just slides into the
frame, with a clip on the shaft, then the sticker put on.
This is done before it's ever placed into the metal base,
the entire black plastic part(s) comes out as a single unit.
A bit of ingenuity could produce all sorts of fixes.
For example, a couple (construction, drywall type) plastic
screw anchors cut to length then epoxied in place would
work, provide screw-down points for a different, standard
fan.
Then there's the entirely-wrong-heatsink option, since most
cards now have holes about the GPU, many different 'sinks
can be strapped on there with plastic wire-ties, heavy
string, electrical wire (carefully shielded), or even
epoxied directly to the GPU providing the 'sink takes a
standard fan so if/when the time comes to replace the fan,
an alternate fan is easily found. Early socket 7 'sinks
that take 50mm fans are ideal for this, but perhaps with a
new fan swapped onto it, rather than one that old... or at
least lubed if it's an entirely-sleeve-bearing fan instead
of one ball and one sleeve.
Most video cards with the two-pin header for a fan, have a
small plastic socket that can be carefully pulled off,
leaving the pins still intact connected to the PCB. Once
that plastic socket is gone, quite a few seeminly
incompatible fan plugs will work with a little coaxing.
Along the same line of thinking, if you have a
spare/old/dead motherboard, the plastic fan header body can
be pulled off of the pins and slid onto the pins on many
(but not all) video cards' pins, but care is needed to push
it onto the pins by pushing the back of the card at the rear
of the pins, holding the plastic stationary instead of
pushing down on the plastic, so there isn't such a strain on
the pins which could rip the solder and traces off of the
card.
You have experience removing Hercules Fan + HS? I got a swiss army knife
handy.
It shouldn't be too hard. Since it has the push pins it
probably doesn't use epoxy, maybe just a thermal pad which
may not even make contact in the middle due to the GPU being
somewhat concave. Just pop the pins out from the back and
if it doesn't then come off easily, run the card for a few
minutes with the fan unplugged, then when it feels hot,
power off system right away and try again to remove it.
However, the fan comes off without the metal portion needing
to be removed. At least in the picture it sure looks like
it uses the typical 3-point screw down design, so a thin
(like jeweler's) screwdriver should allow removing the fan
assembly alone.
.. I am wondering, can I goto home