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Hello Fellow Browns Fans I need your help with my computer.

I am not computer illiterate and am not afraid to play with my hardware, but I have encountered a hardware issue that I am not familiar with and need some help.

My computer has recently decided to devolve and tried to turn itself into a weed eater. Well not physically, but it sure sound likes one.

To me it sounded like a fan so I opened the machine up and tried to blow all of the dust out, and make sure that everything was in working order. I did not make this machine my father in law did and I was surprised when I opened it to find that it did not have one but five fans on it. (I know that all the IT guys are laughing at this point because that many fans is normal, and it is clear that I have not had to do any wok on a computer that was built after 1999).

I was able to locate the problem, by unplugging each fan in turn, and was able to locate the weed eater engine. It is of course the Fan that I know nothing about and hence the reason I seek your advise.

The fan that is causing problems is the small silver fan on the motherboard (not the cpu fan), and I would like some help getting it replaced. see giant arrow in picture.



Out of sheer curiosity can anyone tell me what this fan is called and what purpose it serves?

Mostly I don't want to look like too big an idiot when I try and buy a new one.

The bigger and ten thousand dollar questions is, when replacing this fan is there any traps or pitfalls that I need to be aware of?

Is it as simple as unscrewing the the three screws and unplugging it from the motherboard?

Thanks for all of your help.

Hungryhound

I'm having a hard time seeing that fan. Is there any type of part number on it? What about a mother board part number?

That is the Chipset fan, it cools the Northbridge portion of the motherboard's chipset.

You can pick up a replacement at MicroCenter (or on NewEgg.com) for about $8.

** Make sure you check to see if your specific motherboard requires anything special like mine does. As it turns out, my motherboards chipset fan's mounting holes are set closer together than is normal and a standard fan won't attach properly, I had to order a VGA fan with the same hole spacing to replace mine (which arrives today, woohoo!).

As for replacing it, yup... undo the screws and unplug should be the bulk of it. However, if you also pull the heatsink off, then make sure you have some thermal grease on hand to put on the chip before replacing the heatsink.

I_Rogue

There is no part or model number on the fan that I could find.

here is a close up of the fan.

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That is the Chipset fan, it cools the Northbridge portion of the motherboard's chipset.

You can pick up a replacement at MicroCenter (or on NewEgg.com) for about $8.

** Make sure you check to see if your specific motherboard requires anything special like mine does. As it turns out, my motherboards chipset fan's mounting holes are set closer together than is normal and a standard fan won't attach properly, I had to order a VGA fan with the same hole spacing to replace mine (which arrives today, woohoo!).

As for replacing it, yup... undo the screws and unplug should be the bulk of it. However, if you also pull the heatsink off, then make sure you have some thermal grease on hand to put on the chip before replacing the heatsink.

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PPl,

Thanks for the help and information.

I will have to check out the mother board later tonight to see the make and model, in order to get the right fan.

Ignore the one and the two on the picture. i was going to ask if which screws I should use to detach it, but that seems like a stupid question as It will be clear when I get the replacement part.

Thanks for the help guys.

Hungryhound

From the closeup picture, it looks like a stock/standard fan, but you likely won't be removing the screws to replace it.

Replacing it will likely be pulling the two push-pin connectors to open the holes in the motherboard for the replacement fan's connectors. You should be able to just grab them with a pair of needle-nose pliers and slowly coerce the pins out. You will likely trash the pin connectors on the old fan in the process, but that's kind of normal as they are like molded toggle pins.

Agreed. It looks standard.

One thing to take note of when buying the new one that I just noticed applies to you now that my new one just arrived is to go with one that is as low-profile as the current one.

With it being positioned behind your PCI slots like it is, a tall heatsink with a fan on top of it will impact your ability to add in any add-in cards of even a moderate length. It doesn't appear that it will affect your Video card though, so you should be fine with anything if you don't anticipate ever adding any new cards (such as a newer sound card or whatever).



***Side Info: Being that I am also in the process of doing this, if anyone out there has an original revision of the ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard and your chipset fan is dying (again) like mine (I'm now on my 4th one in 3 years).... Evercool make a VGA cooler (of all things) whose push-pin connectors are supposed to line up properly (a stock fan doesn't). Search NewEgg for the EverCool VC-RE Twinkling VGA Cooler.... it even comes with thermal paste. The one posting I saw about it says that it should be a simple swap-out and its pure copper construction actually runs the chipset cooler than the regular ASUS parts.... I'll post a follow-up later when I know more (it just arrived, won't be in my system until this evening).

Hopefully hound doesn't mind, but I need to hijack his thread a bit ......

I need to purchase a mobo / cpu for what I would guess was the lack of a working fan. I am looking at either a P4 3.0 or 3.2 ghz or a Pentium 2.0 dual core. My question is how do these compare, as the pricing is about the same. I am going to check at Tom's Hardware to see if they have such comparison, but I thought some may have an educated opinion / experience. My plan for this former AMD will probably include some gaming (FPS - HL2, Battlefield, etc.) and video rendering.

Thanks.

What sort of budget are you looking at?


Personally, if you are replacing motherboard and all, you need to step to the latest platform and that means forget the P4's... they're not worth it anymore.

Get a current Socket 775 motherboard and either a Core2 Duo or Core2 Quad.

Under $150:

TigerDirect

Pricewatch

Obviously these are all combos, but I figured I would not find much cost savings by shopping separately. While shopping I've seen a lot of the 775 and dual core did seem to fit my budget. I wasn't sure how a hyperthreaded P4 would compare to dual core of whatever clock speed. Thanks for recommendation. This machine does not have to run the latest shooters, but being able to process video better than my current 2.5 P4 is a big plus.

Btw, I have seen many board manufacturers whose name I don't recognize. I will certainly purchase with a warranty, but would just as soon not have to bother with a bad mobo. Any ones to definitely stay away from?

If you run something on a 2.4GHz P4 and then run the same thing on a current Core2 at 2.4Ghz (even using only a single core), you will see a dramatic difference in performance.... things aren't all about clock speeds anymore, they are about how much is getting done per clock, and there just isn't much comparison.

Brand Names... of the ones on that TigerDirect page that you linked to:

I like ECS, ASUS (even though I regret ever buying my current one), EVGA , Intel.

AsRock is ASUS's budget brand. Biostar has a respectable name in Asia/Europe from what I understand, but I still consider them as cheap-o boards and don't touch them. I also tend to avoid Abit. MSI is pretty solid.

Gigabyte is my current favorite aside from Tyan (the undisputed King of Motherboards in my mind).... but my next one will actually be an EVGA board.


Being that you are trying to keep it on a pretty strict budget, if you have to take a cut somewhere, do it on the processor for now... but MAKE SURE you get a motherboard that gives you a bit of an upgrade path.... like something that you could drop a quad-core CPU into in a year or so. You may end up with a slower CPU to start with, but it gives you the flexibility to upgrade in the future when the prices on those parts come down.... I'll see if I can find anything to reccommend.

Very good information. Many thanks!!

I've been running my refurbished Dell for years now and it just keeps chugging along despite my constant abuse <fingers crossed>, but I'm looking forward to upgrading.

Thanks again.

One more question (I think )....

I'm going to get the EVGA board which will allow me to go quad in the future. It even has on board 5.1 audio...not a necessity, but I have that on my current box so it gives me the option to switch speaker sets.

What about cooling? Any particular favorites for fans? I'm not interested in liquid cooling since I am looking to be thrifty, but since the last board was probably the victim of heat I don't want to do that again. Btw, I am not interested in overclocking.

If you're not looking into overclocking, then a standard OEM CPU cooler should be fine.

If you want to get a little more robust though... I just put one of these bad boys in my older brother's system (and will probably put one in mine until I get the water cooling added):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118019

A few days late, but thanks again. I had already decided on an OEM fan as you recommended (and added a case fan). If I ever upscale to quad, I'll take a close look at the copper base / heatsink fans. I gotta admit I continue to be impressed with TigerDirect's pricing, especially for somewhat "dated" components. Here is what I ended up with:

Mobo / CPU combo

EVGA e-7100/630i nForce Socket 775 Motherboard featuring up to 1333MHz FSb and 800 MHz memory. Includes 5.1 on board audio, Firewire and the expected USB ports and SATA compatibility

Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2Ghz 1MB cache 800Mhz FSB

Both for $135.99 (with $15 mail in rebate).


2 gigs of Crucial Ballistix PC6400 DDR2 800MHz RAM for $19.99 (with $30 mail in rebate)

EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 16X 512MB PCIe w/DVI/TV-OUT video card for $19.99 (with $20 mail in rebate)


I don' t mind waiting for the rebates considering I got whats above, an 800 dpi optical mouse and the fans for just over $200 plus shipping (ground, less than $12). I can't wait to put this together and get rolling.

I do have yet another question (I actually didn't post this to brag about my moderate upgrade ).........

The video card offers full DirectX 10 support. Is XP Pro compatible with DirectX 10 or is that exclusive to Vista (I currently have no desire for Vista)?

That's some nice horsepower for the price

DirectX 10 is Vista only.

If/when you are ready to upgrade, you can buy OEM copies of Vista Ultimate for like $160. I'm going to be buying the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate shortly. Just one note... there is a 2GB memory limit bug during install on pre-SP1 copies of Vista, so if you order it order a copy that includes SP1 even if you have to pay a little extra vs. a non-SP1 copy... it'll save you time and headache.

Thanks again purp.

That's what I figured with DirectX. As Vista was being released, I remember that being the only item I was interested in. Frankly the "WOW" of Aero doesn't matter to me and I think it's just a waste of system resources. Perhaps that OS does do a better job of utilizing a 64 bit box and other advances. I was only hoping that DirectX 10 could be applied to XP, but then again that would not make much marketing sense to MS even if it was possible.

None the less, I'm looking forward to running Battlefield 2 at higher settings and actually being able to run the COD4 demo.

Yeah, DX10 is about all I'm interested in as well, well, that and 64-bit.

I'm actually making the jump to it fairly soon as my motherboard is pretty much fried (won't work at all anymore with USB keyboard/mouse) and thus I'm upgrading my whole platform anyway (c'mon stimulus checks!!)... a result of which will be an all new motherboard, processor & ram... so I'm going Q6600 & 8GB DDR2 with the 64-bit Vista in the EVGA Triple-SLI motherboard.

I actually might be able to run Crysis, lol

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so I'm going Q6600 & 8GB DDR2 with the 64-bit Vista in the EVGA Triple-SLI motherboard.

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Now that is "WOW"...lol. I didn't realize that 3 cards were possible.

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I actually might be able to run Crysis, lol

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I didn't even check out that game until now since I knew my old P4 wouldn't have a chance. I checked out the requirements and it looks as if I'm good with what's recommended with exception of the video card, but it's only a couple of series behind so it might have a chance. If nothing else it will be a good test of the fans (perhaps I should take a window air conditioner and point the vents at the computer...maybe I can play in a walk-in cooler...anyone got a refrigeration truck with a 110 socket....lmao).

The screenshots of that game are simply phenomenal.

You will definitely be able to run it, you'll just be at Low or Medium quality. There are currently many systems that can run it on High quality.

Yeah, I'm anxious as hell for that triple SLI
I've got two 8800GT 512's right now... and it's sweet as hell. I'll have to wait until June to add that 3rd one though

I'd love to play on a system like that. Budget, need and the fact that a 12 year old playing on his dad's laptop could own me keep me from even thinking of such an investment.

Nice specs on your part though. Perhaps NASA or DARPA could farm out some work to you.

lol!

I justify it by telling myself that it'll help with me with my work... afterall a computer geek has to have a powerful computer, right?

Wow,

This thread has really taken a life of its own. Glad to see other people getting help in it.

As an update on my progress.

I figured out the motherboard type (asus A8ne, might not be correct as I am work and don't have it in front of me), and was able to contact the company and even though the mother board is a good 4 years old they sent me the replacement part for free.

Now I am just waiting for the part to arrive, and then the fun begins. Hopefully it all goes well, but I may be calling on your expertise in the future.

Thanks for all of the help.

HH