I noticed a whining noise, coming out of my computer, and it turned out to be caused by the fan on my graphics card. It is about 3 years old, so the fan starts to wear and will soon stop turning, which could be disastrous for the GPU on the graphics card.
So I started looking for a replacement fan on the producer's website and found this :
Noisy Fan or Fan Failure
The fans on ATI graphics cards are not user replaceable parts. To avoid any complications due to any possible damage that may have been caused by the fan's failure or degraded functionality, the entire card should be replaced. If the card is currently under warranty and built by ATI, you can fill out and submit the online warranty request form at http://www.ati.amd.com/rma.
As I mentioned, my graphics card, a ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128MB, is 3 years old, so past warranty, but it still works fine. It seems I'll have to find a replacement fan, without help from ATI. I'm sure I'll find one, but I'm a bit upset ATI provides such a lousy service.
I can understand, they want you to buy a completely new and costly graphics card that's faster and better, but maybe if you read something like this, a customer might consider buying a graphics card of another supplier next time. One that does provide spare fans. ;)
