Loud northbridge fan on my ECS motherboard

[Gretzky]

My mom has a soweing machine and it came with a little bottle of lubricant oil. Could i use that on the fan?

Do i need that fan on the northbridge

 

[Jayczar]

Don`t use more than a thimble full of that oil!

 

[Gretzky]

hehe timble. You mean 1 drop? or a very small drop ?

Kinda hard understanding ur lingo

 

[LastRide]

Is the fan loud or dirty?.You could put a drop or 2 but I would take it off first put a drop or 2 inside and spin it around for a while cause sometimes you get excess oil.When it spins it might throw oil on your mobo.Maybe best to replace it if you have a problem with it.

 

[Gretzky]

the fan is loud, its a annoying noise. Gonna clean it out first tomorrow then maybe put some of that lubricant.

 

[Buz2b]

Keep in mind that you will have to put the oil in the correct spot. You most likely will have to remove a label on the center section of that fan to get to the area. Once exposed, use one small drop of Sewing machine oil, the replace the label or use any other sticker that you have that fits.

 

[forkd]

WD40 would be my oil of choice. If some does get on your components it is very unlikely to short anything.

I used to use WD40 to clean inside of distributor caps in humid or wet conditions to make sure no water will shorting the ignition system on automobiles.

Just a thought.

 

[Jhhnn]

Or get one of these, no noise, very low maintenance, total overkill-

Zalman

If your board has a halfway decent heatsink under that fan, it's likely that simply removing the fan will work just fine. No matter what chipset your board has, somebody else sells the same thing without a fan at all- it's eye-candy, a marketing ploy, like a spoiler on an econobox.....

 

[Buz2b]

it's eye-candy, a marketing ploy

Actually, in some cases that is simply not true. In fact, there is significant documentation that shows that for some that have problems booting to 133 FSB with the (ECS) K7S5A MB, adding a chipset fan "fixes" the problem. Now, I understand that there was no fan to begin with so there was no attempt at "eye-candy" or "marketing ploy". I am just pointing out that there are cases (and interestingly enough this one is with an ECS MB) where a chipset fan DOES make a difference.

 

[Jhhnn]

Maybe so, Buz2b, the only time I deal with the ECS clan is when I'm stuck with it, and thankfully it's been a while.

Even if that scenario is accurate, there's no reason to use whiney aftermarket eye-candy, either, when highly functional hardware like the zalman is available. If it won't do the job, then the board model in question has design issues well beyond the scope of discussion on this forum..... For that matter, any board that won't boot properly at stock speeds/configuration needs to be returned to the vendor in exchange for something that will.

Just my experience/opinion, attach whatever value you see fit....

 

[Buz2b]

Jhhnn:

any board that won't boot properly at stock speeds/configuration needs to be returned to the vendor

Oohh, you said a mouthful there. Many discussions here and at the OC Workbench ECS Forum on the quality of that board. Actually, I may have slightly miss-stated things a bit. The "fix" of applying a fan on the chipset HS of the K7S5A was originally "discovered" (for lack of a better term) as a way to get the board stable at higher FSB speeds and is more commonly used for that. However, it is also used in some instances where people have had problems getting the board to consistantly run stock (133) speeds.

no reason to use whiney aftermarket eye-candy, either, when highly functional hardware like the zalman is available.

Yeah, try telling that to almost any board company.

As we all know, they (most all) go for the economical (read that as crapola) solution. The AK31 is a priime example. It is notorious for it's "soon to die" sounding chipset fan. In fact, they are so used to RMA's because of this that it only took one simple email to a customer service rep (Shuttle) for me to get a replacement fan sent. It was at my door in less than 5 days with no questions asked. The beauty of it was that the fan on the board I was building with wasn't bad, or at least had not gone bad yet. I just did this to "cover my A$$" in case the user of that system starting having trouble. :Q (Crossing his tired-of-typing fingers) So far, I haven't needed it. Go figure.
Thanks for the discussion and as you said, "attach whatever value you see fit.... "