Loud pc plus strange fan behavior

[jdjuice]

So here's the deal:
I bought a Lian-Li PC7A+. It came with two case fans, an 80mm in the back and a 120mm up front. I also have a 3500 venice with a stock heatsink and fan, and a sapphire x800 pro with stock fan. I have an epower 450 watt power supply. I also have an MSI k8n neo4 platinum with that noisy northbridge fan. When my comp is running idle, the cpu fan runs at about 900rpm and is silent with the cpu temp at around 35C. The NB fan runs at 100 percent all the time and makes an annoying buzz. When the cpu is put under a bit of load, and the cpu temp reaches about 40C, the cpu fan goes from around 30 percent to 100 percent and becomes very noisy. This is fine when I'm gaming and the sound of the game drowns out the pc, but after I'm done and the cpu is at idle, the fan is still going nuts at 100 percent, around 7000rpm, eg right now: I've been using the internet for about 2 hours and the fan is loud as hell. I think the fan is actually generating heat and heating up the heatsink bc the cpu temp has dropped below 40C. So what should I do? Can I hook up a fan controller to my NB fan and my cpu fan? There seem to be warnings about hooking up fan controllers to variable speed fans, ie cpu fans, mb fans, etc; is this still ok as long as I leave the fans at a reasonable speed? I've tried speedfan, but for some reason my NB fan won't respond, and my cpu fan used to respond but now doesn't. I don't have cool n quiet turned on. Any ideas? Thanks very much!

 

[SketchMaster]

Make sure you have the newest BIOS for that Motherboard. I have the same one and speedfan worked fine.

The CPU fan that comes with the chip has a temp sensor on it but isn?t very good because it?s on the fan and no ware near the CPU so it is sensing the hot air that is being sucked off a hard drive or something and so it will still spin like crazy even if the CPU is fine. I don?t know how nice it will play with speedfan so you may have to play around with it while keeping a close eye on it.

As for the chipset fan, it is crap and will be loud not matter what. If you can get speedfan to work I think you can turn it down. If you know what you are doing you can pop off the heatsink/fan and put more thermal paste on it, MSI only puts a small dab on and calls it good. *rolls eyes* (knew I should have gotten an ASUS. Oh well)

I have the Noise Isolator fan controller in my computer and have the case fans hooked onto one knob, the CPU on another and the chipset fan on it own and I have no problems with them.

 

[jdjuice]

Cool thanks. I have the newest bios version, but the weird thing is that, as far as i can tell, when I first got the mb i didnt have this problem, but once I installed the newest bios, the fan started going nuts. So you say its ok to hook the cpu fan and NB fan up to a fan controller? Any fan controller recommendations?

 

[albumleaf]

speedfan ought to take care of your problem.. christ. replace your northbridge fan with a passive zalman cooler, get another hsf for your cpu (sonictower, xp-90, zalman 7000)

 

[SketchMaster]

This is the fan controller I have. You Can have upto six fans on it and it also has switches for neon light or what ever you find to put on them, it's not to much money and it will go nice with your Lian-Li case. Just don't go over the 60 watt rating.

Only beefs I have with it is the knobs don;t have a 'off' point and they wiggle a bit. other than that I like it over thoes digital ones, I just don't trust them myself and I also like playing with the knobs!

Yes it's fine to have the NB hooked up to the controler aslong as you remeber to turn it up when ever you are going to work your CPU. (i.e. Games, rendering ect...)

 

[jdjuice]

Thats the weird thing though, speedfan isnt changing the speeds. It was working for like a day, then it stopped responding. Ill go with the hardware controller and do it that way. I'll try replacing the hsf, because of that weird temp probe thing. Thanks very much!