[batman0877]

I sometimes (about once a month) get a popup message that my video card clock speed has been automatically reduced because it is too hot. If I open up my computer and check, it is indeed pretty warm.

http://www.imgur.com/034hO

You can see that there's a grating right above the video card, and I would like to mount a fan here to help cool it. As far as I can tell, there is no existing frame or screw holes or anything for adding a fan. Will that be a problem?

http://www.imgur.com/ioMIp

This is the only free connector that I can find coming from my power supply. Will I be able to add a fan without also getting a new power supply? If not that's not a huge deal, because I needed a new PSU anyway but I'd rather get this card cooled as soon as possible.

[Carbon]

I'm not seeing anything but a tab over the card, which isn't exactly any sort of useful mount. If you mean the grating perpendicular to it, that's just case material, it doesn't indicate that a fan is mountable there. The only way you're going to make a fan work there is Dremeling some screw holes out.

Nonetheless, the better option is an Accelero passive cooler, and possibly dumping what looks like a nVidia chipset motherboard with the flaming northbridge sitting right by your new card. I can't see what type the motherboard or the card are though.

[pete21]

agree with Carbon
if you dont want to go to the expence of an aftermarket heatsink. maybe give the fan on the graphics card a good clean. also better air flow around the card with a cutout of the side panel of the case and install a 120mm fan to feed that all important fresh cool so the graphics card fan can use

if it was me i would add more intake fans to seed more air in the case and also get an aftermarket cooler for the card

[Fordy]

Actually I reckon you could quite easiy mount a fan there, I did a similar thing for a friend a while back.

If you just rest the fan on that little tab, and then drill through that side of the case and stick some screws in, or if you don't want to do that use a good glue, someting like Gorilla Glue works well for plastic on metal.


However when I did it, there was no Video cooler already, and it was more of just a general case fan. So really I'm saying it could be done, I'm just not sure it would help your GPU cooling massively though, because the only air it would shift, would be what the fan on the card had already exausted.

So ultimately, get an ater market cooler as Carbon and Pete mentioned, or do both if you feel like fiddling with our case a bit - Pete can tell you how fun that is

[mctw]

Just wondering, but am i the only one that noticed his card is upside down? And the that motherboard is on the wrong side of the case..... Its a dell (can see the symbol in top left corner) which probably means you cant replace the board!

If you do manage to install a fan by whatever means (id be tempted to use the glue method, but thats just me!), no, you cant use that adapter from your PSU, but most fans come with a run through adapter for a Molex, so you will be able to do it that way instead.

[Fordy]

Yeah, Dells are a bit wierd