ATI Silencer 4 fan stopped!!

Hi all,

I've had (as I'm sure you've guessed from the title) an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer 4 on my Gigabyte X800Pro for a week or two now, and have had no problems, card runs at about 30C at idle. Today, however, I noticed the temperature went up and when I looked in the case while it was on, the fan wasn't moving!

There were no wires or anything obstructing it like had happened once before, and nothing had changed in my software or hardware config. I use ATITool to control the fan speed but this has worked fine so far, and when I rebooted, as soon as the PC powered up, the fan still wasnt working, so I don't think its a software problem.

First I removed the card and checked all the connections, and the fan worked again. However, it stopped about 20mins later. Tapping the plastic casing around the fan (while the pc is on, yes i'm careful) seems to get it going again, but I cant do that everytime it stops! What could be causing this?

I have found the odd thread on the internet from people with roughly the same problem, but no-one seems to have worked it out.

Please, any suggestions would be great, cheers all!