Uh oh... grinding/whirring mobo fan

[KnickNut3]

Hey. I have a KT7A-RAID motherboard, and my already loud machine suddenly started making an odd whirring sound. I can't really describe it, but it cycles, WRRRRRRR wrrr wrrr WRRRRRRRRR wrr wrr. (LOL ) It's driving me nuts. I opened my case, and saw it was the smaller fan on the motherboard (not CPU... Mobo chip fan?). It's going about 1/4 speed it should be going (I can almost make out the logo), and when it wrrs loudly it moves a little faster, but not much.

Do I need to replace this fan? Is it vital to my system health? Should I shut off right now until I replace it? What should I replace it with? What size? Just a fan? That kind of stuff.

OK, just as I'm typing it went back to normal (a little bit louder than normal, but more normal). I'm sure it will go back to normal, though. It has before.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[KnickNut3]

^ this doesn't sound good... :frown:

 

[Pheran]

Just take it off and replace it with a Zalman ZM-NB32. That's what I did on my KT7-RAID just because the fan noise was annoying me. It works great.

 

[KnickNut3]

Nice idea... do they sell it anywhere else? I just don't like paying more for shipping than for the product :frown:

 

[whitelight]

sharkacorp sells it the cheapest. other sites i've seen sell it for $10-12 without shipping. and if you want, you can just take off the fan altogether. i have an epox 8k7a and i just took off the fan. it's been like that for a month now, and it's running just fine.

 

[KnickNut3]

OK. Thanks.

Is it at all dangerous to not have a fan on it? I could just rip it off and see what happens.

 

[cholley]

i got a replacement at radio shack and stuck a little heatsink on

 

[RedShirt]

A friend of mine has a KT7 (not a KT7a) and his did the same thing. He just took it off and his computer works fine.

I do not know if the "a" runs hotter or not though.

 

[KnickNut3]

Well, a lot of the time it's not doing much to begin with... we'll see... I'll try taking it off.

 

[Ionizer86]

The Coolermaster fan on my 8KHA+ (it cools a KT266A) also started funking out. I just disconnected it. I plugged it in a while later, and the sound seemed to be normal. But it funked out again, and I can't tell if any fins are damaged or not. I cleaned the dust out, but that didn't help much.

I simply unplugged it. Nothing happened at all.

Oh, and the KT7A uses a KT133A chipset. My other KT133 board does'nt even have a fan. Check to see if other KT133A boards don't have fans, because if some don't then removing the fan will be ok. A warmer northbridge will affect fsb overclocks though, so make sure you're on stock speed.

Before we leave the subject, will the Zalman big heatsink cool as well as a little heatsink with a 40mm fan on top?

 

[KnickNut3]

I found a review of them somewhere (search for that model on yahoo and it comes up) and they run at 37C instead of 35C or so with the fan. Almost as good.

 

[Goldfish]

Having a fan on the northbridge is more of a formality than a necessity.

 

[dpick]

I just went through this with my KT7a. All you have to do is take off the northbridge fan, peel off the sticker covering the bearing (mine was on the back side of the fan), and give it a little squirt of oil. This totally took care of the noise for me. I guess this is a common problem with the Abits.