Windows 7 - Graphics card squeal - is it normal with a GPU fan?

Is it true that fan-related squeals from graphics cards are normal? I have NVIDIA GeForce 9300, and it emits a low squealing noise that stops after around 5 minutes. It comes up randomly again and stops again after a matter of seconds. So far nothing has happened. It HAS a GPU fan, so I'd like to know what the case is.

After constant use the grease in the bearings for the fan may start to either harder or run out. On a GPU that old I would say its normal if its coming from the fan and not some other component like a capacitor or a voltage regulator.

Thanks! What happens if it DOES come from a capacitor?

Basically a capacitor acts as a buffer and "cleans" the electricity by preventing ripple currents

If a capacitor goes bad it will look like this:

If a capacitor goes bad it could interupt the electrical circuit on the GPU and cause issues like excessive power draw or even killing the GPU altogether because it cannot protect it form power spikes.

Does that cause squealing noises as well?

Capacitors that start to go bad may sqeal, but once they go bad they generally dont make any more noise because there is no more electrical current that can pass through it.

What I would do is watch the GPU fan from the moment you power on your pc and see if there is any correlation to the noise.

when i had a squeaking noise, to determine the source, i stuck my finger in the gpu fan to stop it momentarily, to see if noise went away, and it did.. source found lol.

do that at your own risk though, i had great cooling the gpu from front and side to keep it cool during my experiment, and had my finger dangling over the power button just incase things got warm