Hi all -

So here's the deal. I assumed that one of the larger fans in my PC was the one responsible for the jet-engine sound emitting from within. No, as it turns out, it's the tiny little fan on my video card that's making a shockingly loud noise. I carefully took the %$£&* apart, cleaned out all the dust, screwed everything back in tightly, and it's still as loud as ever. It's a fairly low budget AGP ATI card (I honestly forget and I'm in the middle of dban wiping the hard drive). It has 512MB of onboard memory, but it's still one of the cheap ones.

The heatsink isn't very hot, but I suppose that could be because the fan is doing its job.

After that long-winded background, here's my question - how the heck do I shut the thing up? I could unplug the power supply running to this tiny little fan, but I'm slightly hesitant (don't want to fry/overheat the thing). Should I just unplug it and monitor it for a while? Or does anyone know some kind of trickery that will solve my problem? WD40?

and you don't want to use wd40 on berings they acually get to be more sticky and i think that the fan would either burn out or or become even louder. also a had a video card that was really loud so i took it to the garage and blew it out really good with the air compressor and then it wasn't too loud any more.

but it seemed to work good for me :)

and if it was a newer card or other components i wouldn't have used it for the same reason that you just stated :)

I too, have one of those little jet engines on my video card. The easy answer would be "replace it", but the hard part is finding one.
So, when mine began doing the jet engine thing a month or so ago (just about one year after I installed the card in my new PC) I did what I always do with noisy fans.

I took the assembly apart, carefully cleaned the little fan and then my own (patent pending) method of eliminating fan noise.

I re-oiled the little guy! Needle point pocket oilers are great, but I do so many that I've taken a little cheaper route.
I use a large Hypodermic syringe that came in an Ink Refill kit, and some very fine High-Grade machine oil.
I never remove the little sticker on the back of the fan that covers the bearing cavity,,,, I use the needle to inject a few drops of oil, right thru the sticker and into the bearing cavity.
Press on the label with your finger while spinning the blades a few times, to force the oil up into the bearings.
Reassemble, and the noise is GONE!

Every fan in my PC, all eight of them, gets a cleaning and re-oiling about twice a year.
Or when one of them starts getting noisy.

I recently refurbished a Thermaltake CPU cooler that was installed in a computer I built back in 2000.
It was howling like a banshee. After a thorough cleaning and re-oiling, it was as good as new.

As a computer tech, I see a lot more noisy fans than the average person.
At least 90% of them can be saved by just a little TLC. (clean & oil)

Cheers Mates!
The Shadow :)

Thanks to all, and TheShadow in particular. I used his patent pending method (though replaced machine oil with Singer Sewing Machine Oil, which I'm fairly sure was from the 50's) - and it worked absolutely perfectly. My once disturbingly loud video card fan is now quieter than a mouse.

a computer i built up had an upgraded ati graphics card and a 10,000 rpm hard drive. it sounded like a drumming jet. but man, it was the fastest computer i ever had, i wish i never sold it.

could be that the drivers have to load at start up or it would be using up some of you ram if you have the video mem. usage set too high in bios. or it could be that your computer has to use more power now to start up which could possibly make it slower or if every thing isn't cool enough that can slow somethings down.