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I have an MSI GTX 460 and about 2 months ago or so it started making this "rattle" type sound, I opened up the case and checked the card and found out that one of the fans ws going bad. So today my card actually started making a really loud and very annoying high pitched sound. I opened the case again and checked the faulty fan only to find out that it's very hard to spin. I tried spinning it with my finger and it wouldn't even move. I had to actually force it (yes force it) with my fingers to actually move a lil lol.

It's like if it's stuck or something.

Now my question is simple, is the high pitch sound coming from the actual GPU because it's getting too hot and it's getting ready to blow (sorry if that sounds silly lol) or is the high pitch sound coming from the faulty fan?

Btw this is the actual card just to give you guys an idea.

http://www.guru3d.com/imageview.php?image=25888

It sounds like the bearing on the fan has gone bad.

You can try and get an aftermaket cooler solution to fix it. You can also try to get a RMA for video card, but I doubt that it will work since your card's warranty probably expired at this point. The last thing you can try is take apart fan bearing assembly and put in some lucubration to see if it helps.

Yup, the bearings on your fan have gone bad. RMA the card if you can. If the card is out of warranty, your best bet is an aftermarket GPU cooler.

Taking the fan apart to clean and oil the bearings may get you a few more months out of it, but since you've waited until it completely seized up to deal with it the bearings are probably trashed already, so this should be considered a last resort.

The noise may or may not be related to the dead fan. It could be the fan motor straining to turn the seized-up fan rotor, or it could be coming from the voltage regulator on the card. Whiny regulators are generally harmless (though annoying if they're loud), but are an indication that the vendor "cheaped out" on the inductors in the switching regulator circuit. The whine comes from inductor windings that lack sufficient mechanical stabilization; the rapidly varying magnetic field in the inductor causes the windings to vibrate. If the inductors have exposed windings a couple of drops of thread lock may quiet them down.

I find that whining inductors and chokes are easily dealt with by a hot glue gun (if you have one).

Chrispy_ wrote:

I find that whining inductors and chokes are easily dealt with by a hot glue gun (if you have one).

If you go this route, make sure you're NOT using low-temperature glue sticks. The switching regulators can get really hot, and you don't want them to re-melt the glue!

If the noise is present when the fan is not spinning, then the (new) noise is not from the bearings, but probably from the circuitry that drives the fan. Specifically, as others have said, an inductor in that circuit. A fan that is not spinning does not generate back-EMF, and so the drive current increases well beyond it's normal levels. As that current is a pulsed current, inductive elements eventually start to complain.

If the noise is very apparent when starting a game then I would say it is your caps. Better cards like MSI's Lightning series have very good caps that don't produce this noise.