Northbridge Fan spinning at 7700 RPM...

[JMEaT]

I have a MSI K8N Neo4 Mobo and every once in awhile the northbridge fan would speed way up for a few seconds, then back down. Now it is spinning so damn fast that the desk is vibrating and it is now the most noisy part on my system and it no longer slows down. It is kind of annoying.

Is there a way to slow it down? I tried messing with BIOS and the \"Cool n Quiet\" features but they seem to only pertain to the CPU fan speed. It is one of those little tiny fans, so 7700 RPMs can't be good for it and I think it my be over kill at that speed since I'm not even over clocking.

Thanks!

[Nosferatu]

Is it possible that a case fan somewhere is getting gummed up with dust and junk, thus causing much lower airflow through the case, leading your motherboard to demand more cooling from the fan?

[Immortal Lobster]

Fans die, simple truth. and chipset fans are often the first to go.

try this, go into your bios, disable Cool'n'Quiet see if that stops it from spinning up so high, if it does, another piece is getting abnormally hot, and should probably be investigated

Temp probes work nicely

[Krom]

Actually the smaller the fan the higer the RPM, it is much easier to spin a 40MM northbridge fan at 8000 RPM then it would be to spin a 120MM fan, a 120MM would probably fly apart at that speed. If the fan is making some huge noise and vibration it probably isn't spinning at 7000 RPM but instead something closer to 70 or 700 RPM. It probably needs to be replaced or oiled, dieing fans can cause quite a vibration even if they aren't spinning very fast, and speed sensors can get the RPMs wrong at times. I have a screen cap of the 120MM fan on my radiator reading 168,750 RPM, so have a real look at the fan that is doing it.

[Mobius]

BAH! I sneer at horrible northbridge fans! Motherboard makers have a lot to answer for!

Passively cool that sucker for a totally silent solution. I modified a Volcano 7+ copper CPU cooler for my northbridge, and it works a treat.

[MD-2389]

Bah, you can take that passive heatsink and shove it for all I care. They do precicely jack if you don't have good airflow. I'll stick to active cooling thank you very much. The only good passive cooling solution is watercooling IMO.

In all seriousness though, I have to agree with Krom. I'd definitely physically check the fan to see if it needs lubrication. You'd be suprised how loud those fans can get when they need lubing.

[Krom]

I'm pretty sure \"passive\" is not a word to discribe water cooling MD. However you are correct, a passive heatsink on the northbridge does next to nothing unless you have the CPU fan, or some other fan moving air around it. But if you do have air moving in the case, then go for it and get a big passive heatsink, thats one less fan to bother with.

[Vindicator]

Bah, you can take that passive heatsink and shove it for all I care. They do precicely jack if you don't have good airflow. I'll stick to active cooling thank you very much. The only good passive cooling solution is watercooling IMO.

Passive heatsinks own. Not only do they not require a fan but if you need more cooling than just the HS its easy to slap a low-speed fan on it. Plus if a fan dies (like on a cheap northbridge cooler) its much less catastrophic if the chip was being cooled passively anyway.

I'm not a big fan of noise, thats why my CPU and NB heatsinks are big passive coolers with a single low speed fan aimed at em.

[Mobius]

I'd love to see your \"passive water cooling\" system MD. Does it comprise 2000 Litres of water - to prevent boiling a tiny reservoir dry in a few hours?

Water cooling needs pumps. Pumps are most definitely NOT passive.

And yeah - passive cooling rocks.

My case has Passive CPU Cooler (Thermaltake Sonic Tower), passive Northbridge (Volcano 7+ CU), passive six-phase power board cooler (Modified CPU heatsink), passive graphics card (Gigabyte X800XL heatpipe), and passive HDD cooling (2 x ZM17-Cu).

Providing airflow is 2 x 80mm Vantec Stealth fans running at 1350 rpm. (Super quiet). Extraction is handled by the same fans, rear-mounted - also running at 1350 rpm.

Temperatures under 100% CPU, 100% GPU and heavy grinding on the HDD are as follows:

CPU: 41C
Northbridge: 62C
Graphics: 53C
HDD: 44C

So yeah, the northbridge is the hottest thing in the box, by quite a margin. It operates almost silently too. By far the loudest sound is the 7200.7 Seagate SATA (NCQ) drive and it's not a noisy HDD by any means.

After a while, you forget how blissful a (mostly) passively cooled PC is. Its not until you sit down at another PC and say \"WHOA! This is just horrible\".

The thing runs 24/7 and doesn't crash, nor artifact at all.

[Lothar]

Water cooling needs pumps. Pumps are most definitely NOT passive.

Could you use the temperature gradient of the water as a pump?

[Genghis]

Water cooling needs pumps. Pumps are most definitely NOT passive.

Could you use the temperature gradient of the water as a pump?

Isn't that akin to how a heat pipe works?

[fliptw]

Could you use the temperature gradient of the water as a pump?

No. not enough room in the typical computer case. Heat travels up, and you need to get the heated water somewhere to radiate the heat. Watercooling uses pumps because you need to move the water outside of the case, and against convection.

You'd need thinner pipes the radiate the heat, so you'd need a pretty hot CPU in order to overcome friction.

[MD-2389]

I'd love to see your "passive water cooling" system MD. Does it comprise 2000 Litres of water - to prevent boiling a tiny reservoir dry in a few hours?

You know, for a grammar nazi you sure suck at reading comprehension.

In all seriousness though,

Apparently you missed that part.

[Krom]

Speaking of nazis, what was the topic of this thread again?