V5 5500 Fans?

[sw96]

To make a long story short - I have a V5 5500 that is missing its fans. I'm trying to track down 2 of these 40mm fans with the small 3 pin connector. I ordered 2 fans but they had the regular sized connector and wouldn't fit. Any suggestions?

[Mikulaish]

If they are 5V fans, you can get rid of the plastic part of the connector on the fan, and just plug the metal "things" on the pins of the connector on the card. IMHO the fans you bought are 12V so the fan connectors on the V5 are useless for you. You will have to bring power from the molex connector on your card or just power them directly from the power supply.

[sw96]

Ok, so I can find 5v fans and wire them directly to the pins on the card or just hook the fans I have now up to my mobo/PSU. I guess that works. I guess I thought actually using the pins on the card would be best as they probably regulate the fan speed according to temperature. I also tried taking off the heatsinks (used a hair dryer to heat then carefully pried) but damn, those things are really glued on there.

Thanks for th help!

[Mikulaish]

NP. My opinion is that 5V fans would be the best since you can hoock them up to the original connectors. About removing heatsinks, there are a few topics on that on this board. Eg. something like "Overclocking the V5 5500. Full tutorial"

[Dr.Yak]

The 5v connector on the Voodoo5 is not regulated, and the VSA-100 tend to emit a lot of heat. So it's best to connect them to the PSU, and eventually use a normal 12v fan regulator (either manual or automatic).

Any fan advertised as universal (for all models GeForce / Ati Radeon / Northbridge chipset) should have the correct spacing to attach in the Voodoo board. Northbridge chipset-only fans may work too, but they'r usually higher and may get in the way.

You can also add small heatsink (RAM-sized) on the back side of the VSA-100 for additionnal cooling. Use only non-conductive medium to stick them (like the double sided tape that usually comes with such models. NO silver compound). You may also recieve such small RAM-heatsinks packed together with your fan. Just check the size before buying.

To get the heatsink out : use a very thin object (like a knife) that you insert between the surface of the VSA-100 (the black plastic part, not the green pcb wicht is soldered to the Board !) and the heat sink. The epoxy glue ins't very well speared and there are empty gaps. The objet must be thin (sharp knife). Check that no component (condenser or a-like) of the board is in the way, that you won't harm your self, and that no pressure is exerted on the PCB part of the chip (although not all balls of the BGA are wired : everything may still work even you if break a small corner. It hapenned to me. But play it self : knife goes between the two black parts).
Then lift the knife. You must use a lot of force to break the epoxy. That's why you must check that nothing else could break appart.

Then go in a well ventilated place (like outside ?) and use acetone (your girlfriend's nail polish remover) to remove excedent epoxy.

That helped me a lot : linux with Xrender acceleretion tends to use a lot of 2D hardware blending functions, much more than Windows (which barely use some H/W blitter), and sometimes, in summer, my Voodoo 5 overheats. The new fan combination changed the overheats for "often including in winter" to "only a couple in summer".
(It's probably a sub-defective sample that sliped thru the factory testing because of the complexe condition needed to reproduce - several hours of non-stop hardware blending before local overheating ).