Dealing With My Fan

[afroakuma]

...specifically, my CPU fan. One of two.

This one is mounted to the detachable wall of my tower case. For the past four months it's been making loud rattling noises, but a good solid smack to the case would usually shut it up.

These past two days, though, nothing I do does more than make it "slightly less" noisy. It makes horrid spinning, grinding noises and is basically pissing me off in the extreme.

I've already removed all the dust, removed the case wall, added emergency heating (external fans and ice) to the tower and nothing helps except tapping the fan wall (which quiets it slighly for a second). I even downloaded SpeedFan to try to override the fan speed (no luck).

I'm at my wits' end, here. I'm getting close to wanting to cut the fan's power wire to shut it up.

Can anyone suggest a way to slow it down (or more importantly, to shut it up)???

Running Windows XP, by the way.

[Yarram]

...specifically, my CPU fan. One of two.

This one is mounted to the detachable wall of my tower case. For the past four months it's been making loud rattling noises, but a good solid smack to the case would usually shut it up.

These past two days, though, nothing I do does more than make it "slightly less" noisy. It makes horrid spinning, grinding noises and is basically pissing me off in the extreme.

I've already removed all the dust, removed the case wall, added emergency heating (external fans and ice) to the tower and nothing helps except tapping the fan wall (which quiets it slighly for a second). I even downloaded SpeedFan to try to override the fan speed (no luck).

I'm at my wits' end, here. I'm getting close to wanting to cut the fan's power wire to shut it up.

Can anyone suggest a way to slow it down (or more importantly, to shut it up)???

Running Windows XP, by the way.

Just unscrew the chassis of your box, and unplug the fan internally. If you can see an obvious problem you might want to just take the fan out, clean it then put it back in. Cooling is VERY important. Otherwise, try and buy a new fan.

[afroakuma]

Just unscrew the chassis of your box, and unplug the fan internally. If you can see an obvious problem you might want to just take the fan out, clean it then put it back in. Cooling is VERY important. Otherwise, try and buy a new fan.

I can't figure out how. Its power cord is this thin line that goes to a white plastic connector that junctions a lot of thin lines together.

And since it's detached from the box at the moment, it's not cooling the CPU; it's just pissing me off. SpeedFan will warn me if the computer is getting too hot.

[Yarram]

Try just following the line all the way to the motherboard/power-board. If not, and you're REALLY desperate, you could probably get away with cutting the wires. (I wouldn't, but you could get away with it, as long as you covered the tips with electrical tape (And made sure they weren't touching each other))

You could also just break the fan. Hit it with a hammer until it stops moving.:smallbiggrin:

[afroakuma]

Try just following the line all the way to the motherboard/power-board. If not, and you're REALLY desperate, you could probably get away with cutting the wires. (I wouldn't, but you could get away with it, as long as you covered the tips with electrical tape (And made sure they weren't touching each other))

You could also just break the fan. Hit it with a hammer until it stops moving.:smallbiggrin:

I unplugged the entire white plastic connector. That shut it up good. Hope nothing else important was on those wires.

Temperatures within the case remain unchanged. Useless noisemaking... :smallfurious:

Thanks!

[Lappy9000]

I thought you were talking about that psycho who leads the AfroFanGirl group. Guess I'll put away the Safety Taser :smallfrown:

[afroakuma]

I thought you were talking about that psycho who leads the AfroFanGirl group. Guess I'll put away the Safety Taser :smallfrown:

The what? :smalleek::smallcool::elan:

[Lappy9000]

You heard me. That's right.

[Erloas]

Well this is clearly just a fan going out. It is probably the barrings and there is nothing to do about it but replace the fan.
By the way, it is not a CPU fan, there is only 1 CPU fan (barring some unusual heatsink that I'm sure you don't have since you don't already know what to do) and it is attached to the heatsink on the fan.
This is just a case fan. It exhausts hot air out of the case. You should be able to find replacements at anywhere that sells computer parts, maybe $5-20 depending how good of a fan you get. They are generally one of two sizes, either 80mm or 120mm, there are other possibilities but it is highly unlikely for a case fan. Just get something and measure it if you can't just tell what size it is.

Depending on the ambient temperature and how many other fans are in the case and what sort of components you are using (high end video cards generate a lot of heat, some vent outside, some don't, quad core CPUs generate more heat then dual cores, if you have a lot of hard drives, etc) you may or may not need this case fan. If it is the only fan on the case (not counting the video card, CPU, and PSU) then you should probably replace it.

Chances are if your system is overheating with the loss of the fan its not likely going to show up on the CPU temperatures much, it might show up on the video card, and the northbridge and southbridge are fairly likely to show a larger heat increase. Chances are you will be getting system instability or artifacting (on the screen) if things get too hot.

It should be very obvious how the fan is plugged in, and you seem to have found that. If it is in a chain, so long as you remove the fan and then put the chain back together then you should be fine. Most of the time fans are put on the end of the chain. The other possibility is if it goes to the motherboard, which doesn't seem to be the situations. If the fan is plugged into the motherboard then you should see the fan speed show up in some utilities like SpeedFan, and you should be able to control how fast it runs, although not all fans can be controlled even if they plug into the motherboard. If they just plug into the PSU (which seems to be how yours is set up) then it will not show up to any program on the system, which just means the fan isn't being monitored.

[Linkavitch]

You know, when I saw this thread title, I thought that you were in a band or something, and one of your fans was stalking you. Funny.

[SilverSheriff]

I somehow expected that too...

[Sereg]

When I read the title of this thread, I thought "Which of us are you talking about? We're all over the VUAV and VUACS threads!"

[Yarram]

I'm glad you fixed your problem. =D