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Cleaning an ATI Rage128Pro fan (G4 AGP origin graphic board)

As usual, I cannot be responsible for any damage to your machines when you will experiment the following tutorial.

Why ?

Because of the several noise sources in my office's room: one G4, one iMac, one B and B G3, an external hard disk, a external burner, a tape drive, a Xerox copier... all these machines generate a noise I get familair.

But the new noise which whistles from the G4 drives me bad ;-).

-> I start to discover the noise's origin.

When I open the G4's door, less noise. I close it, noise comes back.

I put my finger on the graphic board's fan to stop it: silence.

The culprit was found :-)

-> Fortunately I had kept a voodoo pci board; I can shutdown the G4 and put the Voodoo inside, to be able to still use the G4 while operating the ATI one.

-> here we goes!

1)

The yellow arrows show the screws to be removed, the blue one points to the power connector to be unhooked.

2)

Once the fan removed, we can discover how dusty is the fan's craddle.

3)

The fan is also dirty (yellow arrow). The blue arrow shows a little curiosity in this operation: the pastic connector was ripped off... but the metallic contacts remained on the board.

4)

I clean the fan with a paintbrush...

5)

... as I do for the radiator itself (yellow arrow).

The blue arrow points to the metallic connectors we loose in the operation ;-).

6)

I finish the cleaning process with a demak'up cotton impregnated with isopropyllic alcohol.

7)

Then I rip off the sticker: do not damage it, it will be put back!

8)

A little squirt of sewing machine oil (or equivalent) to lubricate the axis.

Sticker put back in place... and I rebuild the whole stuff.

Wow: a very noiseless G4... but... oh no... now, this is the 7500 machine internal hard disk which I hear the most... :-)

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