Maximum PC

Here's a new one. Had a hard time believing it but the fan on my ATI Radeon 9800 PRO has fallen right out of the heat sink. Found it sitting on the card below after opening the box when the computer wouldn't boot.
Wonder if the GPU is fried?

Ouch..I don't know but I think the GPU will be ok..I mean the computer did not boot at all correct?

I wasn't home when it first happened. My sister tried to boot it up but couldn't. That was yesterday. I tried tonight. When it wouldn't boot I opened the case and there it was.
But, no, wouldn't boot.

Something tells me that the GPU isn't dead. Stick the HSF back on and try?

Edit: whoops.

the hsf didnt fall off, the fan fell out of the heatsink. im thinking its not fried, though i cant be sure, but most of the newer cards have technlogy that will slow down the card if it starts to overheat, hopefully your card did that.

Gonna hit the local store, get a new fan/heatsink and give it a try. Cheaper than buying a new card. If that fails then a new card.

Or perhaps the fan fell on some vital motherboard part? Just speculating.

- Jesse

Heat sink fell off, sounds like sabotage man. Heat sinks don’t just fall off; I have seen FedEx guys kick around a new PC's and they still boot up.

Anyway get a Zalman heat sink there nice and quiet. (I think I spelled Zalman wrong though)

I'm assuming something big happened toget that fan to fall off, possible a power surge or something above what your surge protector can protect against. That doesn't necessarily mean your card is shot, but it does mean your mobo might be.

IVIUSTANG - the mobo is in a vertical case so the fan didn't hit it
yo_man_will - no sabotage and it was just the fan falling off not the heatsink with it. This after several months of being installed.
Liquid86 - I have 2 computers plugged into the same UPS. The other still works fine. Doubt a surge would knock one out and not the other.

Ya, the "how" is still bugging me. But it happened, so what to think? I think it still works great once you get a fan back on there. It got hot, it shut down, it told windows not to start. Good Job video card!

They have thermal limits built into CPU's and GPU's. Once they're reached, they shut off. They're set at levels that the manufacturer deems "safe, but better shut down to get the user's attention". Just like a rev limiter on a car. It may hit the limit and stop "going", but it doesn't mean the engine won't work anymore. It just told you "that's enough. Stop or I'll break".

Hey, now that we know what happened, can ya tell us who made your card (powercolor?) and maybe a pic of it? I still can't see how a fan slips off the spindle and right out of the unit.

And this could also bring up my other gripe that's been around for ages. The AGP standard has the HS on the bottom. Heat rises, so why not flip the damned thing to the top? As it is now, the fans on these things dangle while spinning. So, they need retention mechanisms and a thrust bearing to do this right. If it was spinning on it's base, it'd be more trustworthy of a device.

it surprised me too the the fan would come off. i was just pulling on my old geforce3 fan and it would not even budge. i gave it a full out pull with needle nose pliers and the only thing that happened was the heatsink shifted around. maybe chumly is right..coughpowercolorcouch

Yep, this was the number one thing that confused me the most when I was reading up about building a PC. Extremely stupid - period. No "imo" here.

When our home was Delphi, I was nudged into finding out why this is. So, I wrote Xtasy, Abit, BFG, and ATI. Every response back was the same: This is the standard, and no it isn't going to change. Just plain vague in terms.

The Video community seems way too passive while the chipmakers decide standards they'll have to live with. BTX is a standard being pushed by Intel. nVidia should have jumped in with their own thoughts and added their changes. BTX is focusing on the CPU, and little more. It's putting it in the airflow, so why shouldn't this new form add in the GPU heat as well? Nope. They'll just take it and keep running this way because they're told to.

It's just a flip of the hardware. The design is the same everywhere, just mirrored. As long as they adhear to the CPU's keep-out zone, they should do whatever they want. If I were buying a card, I wouldn't care very much at all if one would break the standard and flip it over. We, as builders, already do a lot of research into what HS will fit what board. What's a little more research?

This would also kill off this entire debate about taking up two PCI slots. Looking at all my past boards, the only thing in the way is the northbridge. The 850E, 865, 875, 925X, and 925XE all have themselves sitting right in the way of this change and would hit the GPU cooler. BUT, with the 925XE (Asus), the PCIe slot lines up with PCI hole #2. The #1 slot in the case isn't being used with anything you throw in there! Nothing will ever use that case slot. But it would if they'd flip the card's layout.

The fact that some of these cards are making these huge HS's that take up that much room is because they can. If they were given the chance to run mirrored, they could still come up with some creative design to get them back in check. The end result would be all the obvious faults fixed. Even more so if OTES actually became a standard. The top of the fan would be the intake, the heat would be ejected right out so it wouldn't even bother the CPU, The I/O could use PCI slot #2, and the heat would eject slot #1. All it'd have to do is dodge the NB chip, and that's no big feat to tackle. The GPU is already out of the way as it is.

Damn..."the man" is holding a good idea back. Damn the man!

Chumly, it was an ATI. (I miss these things too when I speed read posts.)
Can't do pictures, sorry. It's already boxed for shipping because I contacted ATI Service and they want the card back. Guess they're going to do their own postmortem. So it's going back to them.

First thing I did was replace the cheesy fan / heatsink on my All-in-Wonder with an aftermarket unit before installing it.

ATI finally got around to sending me a replacement board. Got a replacement (aftermarket) fan/heatsink that I am gonna use instead of the stock unit.

I think this is ridiculous too, I've got a nice big 120mm fan right above the AGP slot, but the HSF is on the wrong side of the card, so the PCB blocks the hot air! How ridiculous. Plus, the standard Nvidia reference cooler has the airflow going through it the wrong damn way. The fan, which sits exactly above where you would put a slot cooler, sucks air in rather than blowing it out. If they had it going the right damn way, a slot cooler would help AGP and case temps tremendously.
Goddamn overeducated idiots designing stuff.. grumble...grumble..

Ha, same thing happened to me Well actually on my card whole heatsink fell of alltogether. It was GeForce 4200 card, and I was respnosible, cause I took off Heatsink to apply arctic silver compound. I guess I didn't put it back securely enought and it fell off. My GPU fried, I was seeing double text and weird color reinbow on my screen. But luckly I was able to RMA it