Is my motherboard about to die?

[Isaac]

The incy wincy fan on my mother board (not to be confused with the fi fi fo fum fan on my cpu) starts buzzing trying to start up. After a few mintues of struggling it finaly start spinning. Should i start shoping around?

I have an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Processor Socket 939

[Genghis]

Seems like you could just replace the incy wincy fan. Ought to save you a bunch of money.

[Isaac]

if i could see a way to detach it i would.

[Warlock]

can ya take a pix or link a pix of it cause it jsut might need a dot of 3n1

[Krom]

On one of my systems the fan (which is called the northbridge fan BTW) doesn't spin at all and the board still works just fine running 24/7. It helps that the system has a high speed CPU fan blowing some air over the northbridge anyway.

[Isaac]

here's an idea. Could i simply just detach the bad fan and buy a new heat sync and larger fan to attach to it? (as if it were a regular cpu). I know how to install a heat sync just fine. Of course this might be over kill but i can't see problem with 'over cooling' a proc chip.

[Krom]

Or you could just buy a larger northbridge passive heatsink and skip the fan entirely since most northbridges don't even need a fan. I've also seen a couple heatsink attachments that were barely contacting at all and used 3M double sided tape as the interface but the board still worked.

Really as long as your system isn't crashing constantly, skip it.

[JMEaT]

Northbridge fans die. I've had 2 MSI boards and after about 2 years they quit spinning. Called em up and they sent me some replacements free .

[Isaac]

Northbridge fans die. I've had 2 MSI boards and after about 2 years they quit spinning. Called em up and they sent me some replacements free .

lol good idea. i'll try something like that

[JMEaT]

BTW, if your lazy you can buy em from newegg pretty cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835103155

[Sedwick]

I once had a motherboard that played music for its thermal alarm. I went into the BIOS and lowered the threshold about 10 degrees. A few hours later, I heard a gentle little electronic ditty playing out the back of my tower. It would go away and come back a few minutes later. You'd think they'd give you something more \"alarming\" than \"Your computer's melting! Dee, da-dee dee dill-a-ding dong!\"

I should probably replace the OEM fans on my 6 1/2-year-old system. Maybe then Vortex wouldn't crash so much...

[Isaac]

BTW, if your lazy you can buy em from newegg pretty cheap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835103155

No if you're lazy you're krom and learn that it works with out. I learn a lot from anime characters these days...

[MD-2389]

if i could see a way to detach it i would.

Don't you just hate that? If they don't have those cheapass plastic retention clips (I call them cheap because most of them are one shot wonders. Try to remove them and they don't work near as well. I usually end up using a steel screw and a couple of nuts to mount them instead...which works out better as I can adjust the snugness manually.) its probably epoxied on. You can remove it by uninstalling it from the system, putting it into a freezer bag, and stick it into your freezer for about ten minutes. (Yes, this actually works. I had to do that to an old GF3 years ago.) After that, take it out and then GENTLY twist the heatsink until it comes off. Be sure to do this as soon as possible as it will become harder to remove as the heatsink warms back up. Then clean off the chipset with rubbing alcohol or goo gone, and mount your heatsink of choice. (Thats if you decide to mount a third-party heatsink)