Watch this before replacing fans on your graphics cards 

I've done fan replacements before, including installing aftermarket heatsinks and installing larger fans onto them. I've been lucky to never kill anything, probably because I always try to verify the pinouts involved as I work. I did not know that connecting the 12v VCC to the PWM line could blow up the card. It makes sense, I've just never thought about it.

I don't get why the fan would come wired in such a way that it could bridge 12V to the other pins. The pin out for the fans is supposed to be 12V PWM RPM and GND (I don't remember the order). I could understand if the sketchy fans just didn't have a PWM or RPM connection at all but why would there be 2 12V connections? I'd be far less surprised if the 1.8V rail just shorted out on it's own for no reason because I have seen pex do that on some cards.

i once bought another set of gpu fans and i installed them the other way when i fired the pc on the fans bursted on fire and melted but the gpu was still alive i guess i was lucky

Hey Tony! In this case if you measure the Ali fan assembly's 2nd and 3rd pin you are most likely to find a short between them because of a solder blob messing between them or just poor soldering stuff. The problem is that the pin number 2 is 12V and the third is GPU Tach which is go directly into the GPU. I got the same card for repair months ago with the same story and the same problem, that 3 leg and the GPU went to the other side immediately when the customer pushed the power button on his pc after replaced the original fans with these s***.

new subscriber here, Binge watching all your videos right now. I learned and entertained on how you fix GPUs. Keep it going.

WoW, i can feel the owner feelings (disapointements, regrets, madness, sad) he have learned in a very hard way. Thanks for the video that may save somebody else.

I find your videos therapeutic, love it! Keep it up! Much love!

Gotta be careful with parts from China. I ordered a display cable for my thinkpad x390, it came and fit perfectly, except for the fact it was wired completely back to front, ie pin 1 was pin 40 and vice versa. Shorted the 19V backlight rail to ground. Blew the fuse on the motherboard, but thankfully I managed to fix it.

well at least the noisy fan issue has been solved permanently

nice testing before taking apart, thumbs up for that!

When I was mining, the replacement fans were always added to an external power source and set to 100%. That way you don't have to muck with the connector pinout. Of course I would verify the tachometer line, and patch that into the connector only in the right location. Or just go upgrade the thing to a waterblock and be done with fan noise(or at least less of it).

iv had same problem with fans from aliexpress the 12v and ground wire where swapped but im smart enough to check pinouts on card before installing it took the pins wired them correctly and it worked fine

100k subscribers incoming 🎉

Awesome video

Yep, you totally can kill your GPU replacing fans. Exact same story here. Fans became noisy -> bought replacement fans from eBay -> replaced and powered on -> dead GPU -> repair shop couldn't fix it so it was doomed. I'm sorry this happened to someone else. I learned my lesson that day to never touch anything again and leave it to the professionals lmao

Right good work 😀👍

So sad. I am super cautious about pin-outs! I had to make up a power cable the other day, to power a Quadro GV100. I joined two six pin cables to one 8 pin cable. I spent ages checking and double checking the 12v and Gnd were correct. I have been doing electronics for over 40 years, and I can tell you - you only get one chance with that much current!

I bought so many fans from Aliexpress & replaced them on so many GPUs! sometimes you need to check the fans if they work properly or not though didn't had this situation before.

You are "knowned" for the 4080/90 SCAM in German Tech Sites! You are a Specialist and explain it to us. thanks for that!

Would it be possible, for you to test the connections of the fans? Is there a difference between the Inno 3D fans and the replacement fans? 🤔

Woooooooo! 100k subscribers!!!

A cautionary tale. I replaced the fans on an Asus GTX1070 Dual OC (bottom of the range) a while back but I made sure they were the same SKU as the originals, they just lacked the hub stickers, and it was fine (I thought the originals were noisy but the new ones sounded identical). 'Budget' GFX cards nearly always have cheapo sleeve-bearing fans which just aren't suitable for running horizontally and they _will_ crap out eventually (particularly if they're mined on), the more expensive ones are usually ball-race and they pretty much last for ever.

Wow. The lure of cheap prices for a quick fix can cost you more. Thank you for the warning.

Once upon a time an AIO pump got seized in my PC, shorted, and blew a fan driver out. The BANG was horrendous! System shut down. It could be the end... However, the motherboard (A-Zeus X99 Pro) didn't give a pecker and still runs to this day just fine. Except for that one fan header. Since then I've elected to go full custom loop with classic full metal jacket D5 and never trust those flimsy contraptions with plastic casings just awating some extra heat to expand and jam.

PWM signal is generated by GPU and fans RPM signal go to GPU as well. Nvidia have 2 PWMs signal (2 separated fans declared by the BIOS) So yes if somehow 12v got into it, it's over :(

my guess is the voltage shooting of fan inductor(fans uses electromagnetic filled of inductance to turn) killed mosfet and made short from gate to source where gate is feeding by pwm ic and killed the pwm and pwm is feeding by core

thank you

Well, ive certainly learned that if i ever need to do a fan replacment by myself on my 3080 ti, imma shop at amazon. Or send the card to you for any problems. I am way to much of an amatur to do such repairs myself. Shame the 3090 could not be repaired, but an educational video any way. Looking forward to the next one :)

I would really have LOVED some detailed close-ups of the fan pin wiring, and showing what was wired wrong, and how one could determine that before installing. Cuz frankly, where are you gonna get a fan which _isn't_ made in china? The OEM fans are usually made in china. I mean, "check redit or discord"...which redit page? What retailers? Sorry to seem frustrated, it's just that I have a 1080 Ti Strix OC and a replacement fan (amazon) sitting on the desk, right now. And now have no idea what to do with them.

2:10 i like the message written on your multimeter! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Wow. could say that is very bad luck if the fan shorted to pcb. This should thou basically lead to question. How the fuck they design those fan circuits on the cards. And how that's even fucking possible. Thats fucking ludacris if fan 12v can short the core or memory like there isn't any fucking protection on the fan circuit? Specially if you think how often fan's tend to break up on cards. And people replace these fans bought from china all the time.

should have check the fan, if it the cause. check it wiring and voltage id draw would help

how does a manufacturer make something so bad that a bad fan can screw up the gpu core? thats insane considering how cheap and avalible fan control IC's are with all the required parts and protections internal to the IC. what happens if a stock fan craps the bed, overheats a winding and gets a short? dead gpu by fan is just poor design choices, what did they do, run a controller that communicates over i2c to have the bios control the fan speed via pwm but were too cheap to get a controller that has the power circuit for each fan channel onboard along with the required protections and went with an external transistor for power instead?

It is mind blowing. Next time I also look 100 times when I buy a new fan. :D

Hey I have a question tech community. I just built a budget dell build. It was a 290 gold watt PSU. its running a i7-6700 which is a TDP of 60 Watts. That leaves some headroom. I bought a 2x sata to 6pin PCIE adapter to install a 1660 which requires around 120 watts maximum. So under full load it might be sketchy. I'm concerned because the Dell PSU's don't have an 18pin motherboard connector and the sata gets power from a motherboard connector. There is only 2 chords going out of the PSU, CPU and Mobo connectors. Did I make a bomb or should I undervolt the GPU/CPU?

My GTX 1070 needs new fans because it's old and was probably used for mining, only the central fan works and outer fans can work when poked or sometimes turn on normally and don't spin for long. I was going to get some Chinese replacement fans but I guess it's not a great idea, although, I don't think PNY has any parts available for older cards. I wish the Arctic Accelero was still available or any similar aftermarket GPU coolers because that is exactly what I need.

You can do anything you want if you try hard enough ✨

in 2013 i built a system with a Powercolor radeon 7870 MYST edition Graphics card (that's the 7870 that used the tahiti core of the 7900 series cards , not the pitcarn core of most 7870's). in 2015 however the fan died on the card. not having an easy way to replace the fan i just secured a 120mm case fan to the card using cable ties. card ran a little hot but only by 3-5 degres hotter than normal , gpu ran fine like that for another 2 years before i upgradeed to a geforce 1070 in 2017. now it sits in a box as a collector piece , still looking to get the original fan (and shroud) repalced now though. also of note the case fan i used was plugged into a mainboard header , not the video card's header.

I've only done this once but luckily never killed the gpu. Got mine from gamazon

Lesson learned, I will send all my repairs to Northwest Repairs.

@8:00 "it's not economical to proceed any further with this card, so we will invoice our customer for the repair attempt fee" and call it a Northridge No-Fix(tm). 🤣

so the hotspot was on the core when you checked under thermal camera? wasnt quite sure why this was unrepairable

i pulled out the shroud and ziptie 2x 120mm fans controlled from the motherboard. it works. kwab.

So what is the solution if the original fan is in trouble and you need to replace it if the aftermarket 'unbranded' fan could kill the GPU? Please i need an answer

Its sad to see how a simple replacement end up like this

Hmm !!!! Sickening and very worrying if I ever need to replace a fan or fan set

Kinda related to the topic but yy mobo (b650e) has a fan header that's close to the pcie slot so I can just wire it there not look out of place. I could just wire it there instead of the gpu itself.

Have done reballing two 1060s both have core voltages and memory voltages but chip is getting very slightly warm with gpu detection error, please guide

Wow, just as I'm waiting for my rx 580 fans from aliexpress.. Now I'm doubting myself should I do it since there is one fan broken and strapped case fan instead of it..

I just bought replace fans for my gtx 1650 super on aliexpress LOL. Now i'm afraid to replace the fan who's not spinning... So, there's a way to know if Im safe using it? Or what can I do...

I ordered a fan replacement from AliExpress and replaced it yesterday. So far it's been working fine. Am i in the clear?

Lesson learned😮

Why can't you test the fans or measure them to see if there is a shout circuit in them?

He should consider himself lucky. This 12v injection could have taken down his entire setup.

Congratz appearing on Tom's Hardware.

Ooh that's a Dell card. Usually they don't have thermal paste anywhere even though the heatsink covers all the right area, and you can gain 20 Celsius by repasting. Did this on my 3080, got great results. Tried to replace fans by noctuas but results were disappointing, gave up.

okay so how do we check if its "correctly wired"? perfect timing because i also ordered a set of "original" zotac fans from china and its coming in a few days. i look for a replacement because i broke a blade on 1 fan. my solution is to break another 2 to balance it and remove violent vibrations. now i hope i dont end like this one. the store has nice reviews and i ordered a wrong fam so they recommended me a different one exactly for my card and shroud. edit: i got the new fans, look exactly as the zotac stock fan. both have the same wire colors but both placed differently, strange. the stock takes 0.5a while the new one from china only takes 0.4a. i ended up reusing the old one and took literally the fanblade from the new one. good as new again.

Had to have more issue then just the fans. Even if they swapped the voltage and PMW lines I don't see it other then the fan imploding.... Should of tested the fans separately and see if they span up.

I wish cards just had a normal 4 pin and used 120mm casefans like most CPU coolers

I wonder if cooling a GPU with regular case fans mounted next to the GPU would work if the fans break? There is a fan control program that I saw JayzTwocents show on his channel once that easily let you control fans by GPU temperature.

@northwestrepair What program or website are you using here?????-->[4:37]

You buy the replacement fans by the model version not the gpu model many people get this wrong because they buy it as it looked the same don't mean it would work. I done this before replacing fans due to broken fins or seized motor and have not killed a gpu core yet so count myself lucky

I think a noisy fan usually needs only a drop of oil, under the label at centre. No replace.

A lot of people are complaining about the fans for inno cards in my country, usually the middle one tends to die in a couple of months.

12mm fans is the way to go fan replacements. while it could be janky to remove the factory shroud, 12mm fans just way way better than GPU fans

How can you revive a dead core?

I would be nice if you probed the fan and then posted an update video. I find it hard to believe that it's that fan that killed that GPU.

I got fans with reversed pinout but was smart enough to not plug them in directly to the card at first and plugged them straight to PSU after cutting plug off. Fans immediately burnt up. Probably would have killed my GPU. Steangely enough, two of the three fans were wired correctly, the third fan wasnt. Weird.

there had to be flyback diode or capacitor to prevent it

Never cross tips!

You could have checked if the original and replacement fans are wired the same, just as a warning for the viewers, since you're already making a video out of this one.

Vau, I have never seen soldering iron almost melting. That is what you get for using chinese stuff who forgot to think about isolation XD I have checked and all my Weller and JBC soldering stations are isolated, that is why I have never had this problem. And using 2 soldering irons is extremely helpful to desolder bulky things. Maybe buy isolated power supplies for each soldering iron.

Sleeve bearing fans suck. I am certain that's what kind of fans were originally used on that one.

oh man, it was much easier back in time. I switched my fans on gtx970 (it was 2019) and it's ok. Still using it.

Please recommend power supply for voltage injection cheaper for gpus, max amps etc

Since the fans are always the first thing to fail and I always consider resale value, here's what I did with my new Asus RTX4070 Dual. I removed the shroud/fan assembly to keep it brand new and replaced it with a pair of Noctua 92x14mm fans mounted with a simple bracket. I made a new connector to plug into the card with the 2 noctua fans on 1 channel and a connector on the second channel to plug in the case fan that feeds air to the card; effectively transferring control of the case fan over to the GPU. When I want to resell the card, I'll just put back the original shroud and new fans for max resale value. Deshrouding your GPU in a away or another will simply avoid the issues of bad GPS fans.

1:10 haha, I killed 5x3TB with a single molex power cable splitter where the 12v and 5v lines were reversed.

I also replaced my sapphire rx 5600 xt fans triple fans, the original is making a rattling sound. It works but my adrenaline software is telling me that is running at 20,000 to 60,000 rpm. Can anyone tell me whats wrong. I fear my gpu would fly away with my house

I buy replacement fans for RX 5700, and one die after month, another make noise :D Fans are original, but they didn't pass quality check In factory, that you can get from China :)

Wow, what a shame, I would never believe that a fan could do so much damage.....

If the fans were noisy the fix would have been putting some kind of lubricant on it. But the owner of the card went with a risky solution.

we will invoice the customer and deem it no fix. it's just not practical. Check our shop, glare light, low melt solder. thank you for watching

I own a 3090 gpu and want to replace noisy fans too. This video got me concerned :) Is there a way for me to check the fans before installing them? I don't want to kill my gpu :)

it could be the new fans amperage is extremely high than what the card can handle and killed it

This repair attempt looks incomplete? I’m saying the diagnosis aspect where you simply said ok that’s it the card is going back and I’m confused because all you showed is a hot spot with voltage injection but didn’t actually trace the competent and attempt to replace or further test so how did you draw the conclusion for sure that the Gpu is dead and cannot be repaired ?

i've ran 2 120mm case fans off of a gpu header with an adapter done this on a gtx 770, rx 480 and a rx 5600xt

I definitely did kill my TUF 3080 12G last fall after a fan change... Had to send it in for RMA, got it back fixed, no reports attached at all. Thx Asus I guess.

I'm inclined to believe he purchased the incorrect fans for a slightly different model or something. I've replaced GPU fans at least 10 times so far.

Would be cool if you did a series where once in a while you buy a broken ebay GPU and see if you can fix it. If you can, then you have a GPU to resell at full(used) price. Content, and potentially a little income too. If the card is bad then you have a bunch of spare parts you can salvage for other cards.

Sad story

Doesn't this look like a 3070 Ti, not 3090?

I wanna hot take this before I watch and see how good I am: If there is an extra sensor in the OEM fan that the replacement doesn't have, or if the airflow is markedly inferior, I can see problems arising [or if the power pinouts on the fans are different, which under 99% of circumstances they SHOULDN'T be.....] Thanks for reading kids, now, ON TO THE VIDEO!

Gotta try to stick to OEM stuff, but new fans saved my RX 580.

And now this card goes on ebay as parts, "history unknown" :) Would have liked to see the cause confirmed by inspecting the fans though

Its amazing for me how people mess around with stuff that cost thousands of dollars and hope it will go fine but dont know how to fill the blinker fluid at their cars...

Why didn't he rma the card?

Yes / pcb and other components

oh wow i do feel bad for the owner. who knows how much it was selling for when they got it...

PWM controller useually uses 1.8 or 3.3

Hi man im from indonesia Can u make content gpu low end with no port and modified using display port or laptop gpu modification fo entertain 🙏