V-Card fan on the fritz

[Monk]

Seems there are a lot of Video card or fan threads cropping up, so why not one that combines the two!

My GeForce 9600GT has served me well since i bought it late last year. It runs amazing does all i need and I got it for really cheap through PNY. I thought i had scored the best deal ever, until about two months ago that is. I started hearing this really strange noise coming from inside my comp, like a fan whining, but I couldnt pin it down.

I could silence the noise with a little movement of the case, so i didn't think too much of it. When i got a new CPU/MOBO combo and built a new comp, i went ahead and kept my 9600 from my old comp and threw it in the new case. This was when i put 2 and 2 together, as the noise continued! I was finally able to replicate the problem and learned the fan on the V-card is the source.

From what I can tell through temp monitoring software, the v-card is in no immediate danger of melting but the fan noise is getting out of hand. On start up it's so loud I have to leave the room. Give it 5 min and it comes down to a manageable level (IE, you can drown it out with some white noise) but it is very annoying. I'd compare it to the noise my 360 used to make when running, only instead of just fan noise there is a low whine added. I can also no longer make the noise go away, so it is definitely getting worse whatever the problem is. Dust isn't the culprit as I cleaned every last inch of this card, first the fan then the heatsink.. which i had to take the card apart to do but I had to be sure!

So now I'm wondering.. where do I go from here? I am not even sure if my warranty covers this, and I don't exactly have the spare cash to get a new v-card. Other than calling Tech Support and throwing myself on their mercy I am out of ideas.

What say you, hardware/software?