Two chipset fans on the Asus A7v133 motherboard have failed.

[GBomb]

Anyone else having problems with fans on this motherboard. This is the second chipset fan I have replaced. It is loud as crap and very annoying. I have already replaced it once and now I guess I will have to replace it again. Very frustrating. All of my other fans seem to work fine. I can tap my case and it will be quiet for a while but then it comes back. Of course, Asus's website is down for construction right now. My house is not very dusty at all and I keep my case free from dust by every once in a while blowing it out with compressed air. Let me know if any of you have heard of this problem or can tell me why my chipset fan keeps going bad. Thanks in advance.

 

[Boonesmi]

yeah it seems to happen alot, my wifes pc uses an a7v133 also and when the fan started making alot of noise i just took it out

(many kt133a motherboards dont even have a heatsink or anything on the northbridge, so i know the board can take it without a fan as long as i dont overclock the fsb)

but her pc has been running for the better part of a year with no active cooling on the northbride, and its 100% stable

 

[GBomb]

Thanks for the info. I think I will just take it out then.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Ditch the stocker and get a thermaltake blue orb cooler (can be found @ Newegg.com). I need to replace mine as well, getting noisy at startup and then going away shortly after.

 

[GBomb]

I just unplugged mine today and it seems to be working okay. If not, it will give me an excuse for a new motherboard..hehe.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

If not, it will give me an excuse for a new motherboard..hehe. . I love those types of excuses, use-em as much as I can..

 

[GBomb]

They do come in handy don't they? lol

 

[Wind]

I suggest u put some form of cooling on the north bridge. Just a HS will be fine. Tht north bridge is very hot during long hrs operation and stability could be greatly undermine...even more if u r O/Cing.

Slapping a blue ORB on it is the best thou.

 

[Zap]

I've noticed that the fans on Northbridges as well as the fans on video cards seem to have this problem quite frequently. I believe it to be a combination of size (smaller fans have relatively tighter tolerances), quality (anyone seen a stock fan with ball bearings?) and dust. Yes, dust. No matter how dust-free you think your house is, your system WILL collect dust.

I find this insistence on using active cooling to be ludicrous. Many of these devices do not need active cooling. What's even worse is that a device designed for passive cooling will get a smaller heatsing when outfitted with a fan. If the fan were to die, the heatsink would thus be too small to cool all by itself. I've seen video cards get burnt out because the fans died. Did these video cards need fans? No. I had a Geforce2 MX that had a decent heatsink and NO FAN, and I overclocked the snot out of it and it never had a problem.

I wish motherboard and video card manufacturers would use decent heatsinks and skip the fan in instances where the chipset manufacturer doesn't say it's needed. As I recall, I saw some Shuttle i845 chipset motherboards (forgot which model, it used SDRAM and not DDR) that had these nice tall heatsinks on the Northbridge without fans. This would be ideal If I can find a source of heatsinks like this besides at this overseas place, I'd probably score me some.