What I Bought
I recently bought an AMD RX 570 on eBay that was damaged. That's how it was listed, even though the card works without issue. The problem with the card was that one of the fans was dead. Well, it was completely missing and the cable had been cut.
This is an image from the listing. I forgot to take any before photos.
Testing the board, it was working just fine. However, when the fans needed to kick on at over 60° C, the card struggled to keep cool. I decided to stop testing so the temperatures didn't get too out of hand if I kept running the benchmark.
What I Did
I had already ordered a new set of fans off of AliExpress because I'm cheap and have no issue with getting good deals directly from China. Also, since I had to remove everything off of the board to replace these fans, I took apart the plastic shroud to see how things were attached.
After painting all the plastic parts. Left was painted white and the right was painted black.
I wasn't a fan of the all red aesthetic of this board. I have this same style board in my own PC, but it works with all the other black and red components of my build. But this board is going into a computer for my kid and he likes green.
Taking the boards off the back of the light up fins, I tested these and they are red LED panels. The fins are a red transparent plastic and fused to the black plastic. So I decided that I lost that battle and to remove the LED board and just paint over the fins black.
To contrast the now very black look, I took the red plastic portion off the board and decided to paint it white. The logo LED of the side of the GPU is a RGB light, so going with white will let me pick relatively any color and it will work well. I think the black and white high contrast looks really great in the end.
All back together and ready to re-paste and install
I had no issues re-pasting the GPU die and getting the heatsink back on, but I didn't know what to expect when installing the card. I didn't test the fans to make sure they worked, I didn't test using the card without the red LED boards attached and plugged in, and I didn't expect anything not to work but you never know.
But booting right away and there were no issues. I got back into the benchmarks and now when it hit 60° C, the fans spin up and the card quickly cools down. The board stays in the upper 50's when pushed and the fans are barely audible. I'm thoroughly satisfied on another GPU fan repair, saving me about half the cost of the typical used board because someone else didn't want to put in the effort. Compared to a new card, I saved over 60% when compared to current pricing on Amazon.
Working just fine. Repair and modification success!
