So recently, I thought my graphics card was dead; it kept randomly crashing my computer whenever I loaded something intensive. At the time, I was seriously considering just selling it off as parts (I bought the GPU for the equivalent of only $38 US for an RX 570) since it didn't actually work. But I then luckily decided to take it apart, and reapply thermal paste; it was then that I realised that there was barely any thermal paste, so this meant that my computer would report the temperatures of one part of the GPU, but another part of the GPU was overheating and therefore the card would crash to save itself from melting.
In my attempt to fix it, I removed the old thermal paste and applied some fresh thermal paste (made sure the die was absolutely covered), and I also tried to take off the shroud containing the fans.
However, the connector would NOT budge AT ALL, and I tried to yank it out with all my force, until I tried using a hairdryer to heat up the plastic so that it would come loose easier. To my surprise, it actually did work! I got it out, but not without casualties.
Yeah, so this wire got cut from the plug. This wire seems to be PWM, which is technically not required to use the fans, however PWM controls how fast the fans spin. The stock fans go VERY loud and when I put it back to together and used it, it honestly sounded like a jet engine, soooo yeah.
Instead of buying replacement fans off aliexpress, I decided it might be worth trying just strapping on a fan to see if it perfoms better at a lower temperature. The RX 570 that I have isn't exactly known for being a powerhouse, and the heatsink isn't very big, so I decided to take a case fan that I had lying around and strapped it onto the heatsink using small cable ties that came with my case. There were holes on the PCB where the shroud was meant to be screwed into, however these lined up with the holes of my case fan almost perfectly!
I then hoped for the best as I connected the fan and the RGB to my motherboard. To my surprise, I booted into Void Linux absolutely fine! The fan was not PWM, but I set the fan to adjust its speed according to the temperature of my CPU (motherboard only allows CPU and not GPU). My logic being, that a game will use a lot of my CPU as well as my graphics card at the same time.
Looks glorious doesn't it! It actually runs much better than I expected it to. I'll show you some Honkai: Star Rail gameplay at 1080p max settings & render scale 1.2. Just look at those temps!: I can barely hear my fans too. Man I really love silent computers.
Do I recommend this? Probably not, but it's definitely viable if you break your fan shroud xD
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