X850 XT Fan Issue

[bloodfist]

I've had my G5 for about a month and a half and I love it. Just recently, a fan has been running at a really high rate of speed, sounds almost like full blast.

I did a little investigating last night and found that it was the fan on my X850 XT. So I thought, I wonder what happens if I unplug the second display. I did and the card immediately settled down.

This morning after running one screen for a while, the fan starts blowing full blast again. Just to try something, I plugged the second display back in, and again the card quieted down.

Keep in mind all I am doing during this is web browsing and AIM and a little XCode.

I reset the SMU thinking it was a system fan, didn't help of course, b/c it wasn't a G5 fan. I doubt resetting the PRAM would help since its a video card issue.

Anyone have any clue as to what might be causing this? Do you think it's an issue I should take up with AppleCare? Running all out its going to cause this fan to fail much faster than it should.

Thanks for your insight.

bloodfist

 

[rickvanr]

I'm thinking because it's a high end card that is compact compared to a Nvidia card it probably runs hot and needs constant airflow.

 

[bloodfist]

But why start running full blast all of a sudden? If it did this out of the box, I wouldn't be worried, but it just started doing this recently. I have played WoW for hours and no such fan activity was triggered.

I found a ROM update from August 2005, that supposedly will fix fan problems. It says it will work for X800 cards and from what I read, this X850 XT is just an over-clocked version of that card. It says it wont flash if I don't have the right card, do you think it would be safe to give this a shot?

I think that plugging or unplugging a display "resets" the card back to how it should run and then after a while goes into a "panic mode" for no reason, and starts running full blast to prevent it from overheating.

I'm also thinking that the G5 fan in charge of cooling the PCI/AGP slots might not be doing its job correctly.

I'm puzzled.

bloodfist

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

My x800xt fan stopped working, and as a result it overheated and got messed up. The fan finally starting working again, but it was too late. It basically had crazy lines and weird artifacts on the screen at all times. Contacted ATI and got an RMA # sent it to them, and a week later got a brand new one.

From my experience, let the fans run, whenever they want, for as loud as they want. Yes, the fan is loud, but it is better than a busted video card. Luckily, I bought my ATI card before they changed their warranty policy from 3 years to 1 year, so I still have 2 years of warranty on this card

Hope that helps.

 

[bloodfist]

True, better to let it run and cool the card. I'm just wondering why the sudden change in speed.

The X850 XT is an Apple OEM card, so it's covered with AppleCare not an ATI warranty.

Anyone else have any experience with this card and its fan behavior?

Thanks.

bloodfist