Over the course of the weekend the not-so sweet smell of a burning circuit board started coming out of my PC, so I did what anybody else would do, I mashed the power button and shut the computer off immediately. When the choice comes between having your PC become a literal fiery mess or have a corrupted OS from an improper shutdown, which to go with is fairly obvious. OSes can be fixed, burnt PC components usually cannot.

After leaving the PC off for a few minutes and unplugging everything, I disconnected the HDD, reconnected the power and started it up to see if it would even boot at all. It did, so I knew the CPU was still in good shape. I then looked at the graphics card and sure enough, the GPU fan had a case of the jumpies (stuttered turning but never gets up to speed).

I was both happy and ticked off. Happy because I knew what was broken and that it was easily replaceable. Ticked off because there’s cash I didn’t want to spend for another graphics card.

Before running out to CompUSA to pick up another graphics card, I did some quick research (using my netbook) to see if it was possible to simply replace the GPU fan. Even though my card was slightly cooked, none of the capacitors blew and it was still operable.

(Note: I have one of those graphics cards with a GPU fan that is not meant to be replaced. Many of you probably use the same type. If you have something like, say, this beast, that’s a different story. The type I’m talking about are the small single-fan "everyday" graphics cards.)

I found this tutorial on the subject from a guy that actually went through the process of replacing a GPU fan on an ATI card. It’s do-able, save for one problem – finding a heatsink that fits the holes and a fan that works. You could search here and maybe get lucky. Other places to look are Arctic Cooling and Zalman.

Let’s say for the moment you do get lucky and find a replacement heatsink and fan. Don’t jump for joy just yet, because two new problems may be introduced, that being rattling and a high-pitched fan whine. Remember, you’re using the holes on the card and not the original posts where the plastic pieces went.

Yes, you can replace a GPU fan. But is it worth the bother on an everyday graphics card? Not really. Considering basic 512MB DDR2 PCIe graphics cards are well under the $50 mark (sometimes as low as $30), it’s a cheap replacement.

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