No Harm in removing one of my CPU fans?

[SaltBoy]

Howdy all,

One of my CPU fans appears to be pretty unstable and is making a bunch of noise, so I'm thinking of removing it altogether. I'm *assuming* this isn't a problem; I played a some BF3 with it off and the heatsink itself wasn't hot at all during play.

Plus, I have an fan that blows over the heatsink towards the outtake and another outtake fan close by, as seen in my photo.

So, thoughts? Is this going to make a huge difference?

 

[dma0991]

You need at least one fan, depending on the heatsink's design and intended use. If you're confident that it runs well without that faulty fan, then all is good.

 

[redyouch]

How many fans do you have on your HSF? One should be sufficient, but realistically, it depends on workload.