Fan Replacemeant on my 2060 Super
After about 5 years of use I need to replace the fans on my ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 2060 Super. The card has been my primary GPU for work and some light gaming, but it is in desperate need of some maintenance as both fans are starting to fail.
Backstory
This is not the first time I had to deal with noisy fans on this card. About 4 years ago one of the fans started a cycle of first making a loud grinding noise, then coming to a halt, and then spinning up again, after 15-year-old me had set the default fan curve to 100% and left the computer running like that for an entire month. Instead of replacing the fan I decided to try and stop it from spinning up again by sticking a pencil through the fan blades.
I had forgotten about the issue until recently when the other fan started to make a different kind of grinding noise. This time it was a more consistent noise and the fan was still spinning, but it was clear that it was on its way out.
So I pulled the pencil out, and to my surprise the blocked fan started spinning again, without making any noise. But I knew that this was only temporary, and that I had to replace both fans.
The Repair
So I started looking for replacement fans on eBay, and found these fans which had the entire product name of my graphics card in the title. When I received the fans and started to disassemble my card I noticed that the fans were not the same as the ones originally installed. Not only did the new fans have a four-pin connector instead of a six-pin connector, but they also had different mounting hole positions :(
You might notice the dust buildup on the card, which I will clean up later :) First I re-packaged the new fans and returned them.
This time I took the smarter approach and searched for the fans by entering the exact name and serial number of the fans already installed on the card. I then found these fans. which were the correct fans that I needed. After ordering these and waiting a month for them to arrive I finally got to replace the fans.
Swapping the fans was quite easy. I first disconnected the wrong cable and unscrewed the fans. After noticing that I had unplugged the LED strip, I pulled the correct connector and re-attached the LEDs. I then took the new fans and connected them after screwing them in. Finally I took some duct tape and made sure that none of the cables dangled loose
To top it all off I also forgot to take a final picture of the card closed up again, but I can assure you that it is working fine and that the fans are spinning without making any noise :D