What killed my old X1900XT

As some of you know, the first X1900XT that came with my Mac Pro bit it and I had to get a replacement. It just started becoming unreliable and generating artifacts, crashing the machine, etc.

The new one has been rock solid, but in the past few weeks I've noticed the fan on it has started spinning very fast and loud. So I opened up the machine tonight and...

There's a big cake of dust clogging the intake! There was hardly any airflow through the card. The fan had to run nearly full speed to keep it cool.

The old card's fan never sped up to compensate for the heatsink getting clogged up, so the card fried itself. This one spins faster and faster as it can't cool itself. Must be newer firmware.

In any case... I dusted the machine out nicely and the fan is now nice and quiet again. Yay!