I have no idea why, it was very quiet for months, then all of a sudden runs so loud it keeps me awake. I have not installed anything new, I just updated to the newest drivers and nothing, and I took it out and removed the dust, there was a fair amount, but still no change. the Catalyst Control Center claims the GPU temperature to be 70 degrees celsius. I have no clue where to go next.
If it's still under warranty you might want to send it in. Otherwise you might have to live with the noise. I know for a fact those ATI video card fans can go bad and start rubbing making a large racket. I had a similar noise problem and I replaced my cpu fan because I thought that was where the noise was comming from. But the little pipsqueek video card fan was the culprit. I disconnected the video card fan wire and stuck a 80mm fan to blow on video card heatsink, that fix my noise problem and 2 years later the video card is still running fine and my computer is very quiet. The card I have is the ati 9600 pro. That's just another option for you, or maybe see if you can find an OEM fan to replace on the video card itself.
could you explain that process for me a little bit, as i think that is the problem since it seems like the fan is rubbing against the casing which causes the fan to slow down and the gpu heats up which makes the fan try to go even faster. it is a vicious cycle.
does the noise go away after a while as i have customers who cooked their power supplies because they ignored the fan warning sound when it groans when 1st started up? that groaning noise is the indication of lack of lubrication to the fan.
the noise goes away when the temperature is at around 40, any higher than that and it starts groaning as you said (that is definitely the way to describe it). so pretty much if i had the computer off for a while and it cooled down it will be quiet for about 5 mins, then ther is no way to cool it down because there is no airflow out of the fan while it is groaning. how do i go about lubricating the fan? w/ what?
my normal method is to remove the fan from the device whereas others just leave it there & spray it with wd40. the reason for removing the fan is to get at the shaft bottom of the fan to lubricate it with 3in1 oil. how is the fan attached to the heatsink, with screws or what?
