NZFF

Here's are question for NVIDIA (or any GPU) users out there.

I've recently bought a new NVIDA 7600 GT (AGP) card - yes I know it is old technology, but I didn't want to replace the entire computer - to replace an even older 5600 GT that had been lumbering under the weight of FS9 for a couple of years. I am impressed with the increase in performance but the fan on the card is excessively noisy. When I turn my computer on, the fan in the card sounds like someone replaced the bearing with one that doesn't fit and then lubricated it with sand. The sound goes for about two minutes and then abrubtly stops (I suppose this is when the driver decides the card is cool enough and stops the fan). If I leave the computer on all day, the noise doesn't come back. I've taken the case of the computer to see if there was anything stuck in the fan and there is plenty of clearence all around the GPU. What I want to know is:

Have any other NVIDIA users had problems with noisy cards?
How much noise should be acceptable? I know the fans are silly little additions, but so are CPU fans and they don't make much noise at all.

Sounds like it may just be a defective unit... especially if its new...

I had a chipset fan on the mobo do that, but that was about after 12 months of fairly solid usage... I took it off and carefully applied some lubricant to the fan, which seemed to help.

and no, the fans are not 'silly little additions', they're actually very important components on modern cards that run at 50-60degrees WITH the fan!

If it is a new card, I would say this noise is normal. When you start up your computer, the fan goes full speed until windows starts up and the display driver starts controlling the fan speed. If it is only noisy when it is going full speed, I wouldnt worry about it. Just be glad that you are one of the fortunate ones who own a card which actually has a fan speed controller (unlike my 8600GT ).
I guess you could try returning it, but I wouldnt worry about it. If it bugs you too much, you could just try getting a silent cooler with no fans.

I used to have that problem with my old graphics card as well, was quite noisy on startup, then started getting quieter once we got to the windows loading screen...

Alex