fa problems on GTX280 - Anything I can do?

[FragMeister]

Oops! Title should say 'Fan problems' :)

The fan on my GTX 280 started to whine a bit about a week ago, and a few days ago I started to get lockups while playing games (the kind where the screen goes black and you have to power-off).

I discovered that sometimes when I start the PC, the fan on the graphics card doesn't start! This is OK for a while as I can log into windows and the card seems happy until I start to play games.

I guess the card quickly overheats and shuts down.

Is there anything I can do about the fan or is it RMA time?

<edit>When the fan is not running, I can stick my finger in it and give it a 'nudge' to start it and everything if fine. It just doesn't start sometimes :(</edit>

[saturnotaku]

About the only thing you can do at this point is pull the card from your case and clean out the heatsink with some compressed air. Hopefully you just have some dust built up in there. If not, it probably needs to be sent for a replacement.

[FragMeister]

That's a good idea, but the card is fairly new (only 3 or 4 months), and not sure how much dust is in there.

Also, it's really difficult to get anywhere near the fan on these cards! Everything is so well sealed-off from the outside world now :)

Hope the compressed air thing works as I'd really prefer not to RMA the card.