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[Spectral Glider]

This is the board I have:

Now, not the CPU fan, but the blue one next to it that says ABIT is making a ton of friggen noise on my board. Is there a way you can oil this thing? Or do I have to replace the fan? Damn thing sounds like it's going take off at any minute.

 

[Shompola]

Ahh its probably a cheap fan. and small cheap fans rotate at a very high speed causing a lot of sound and noise. Has it allways been noisy or just recently? You can clean the fan with a vacuum cleaner, the vacuum cleaner should blow out air and not the other way around. But still this is a temporary solution as your fan is probably dying, slowly dying. Getting a replacement is best. Does the fan have a heatsink below it? If not it might be better to remove the fan altogether and glue a heatsink on the chip instead. I dont think it would be any problem as long as you arent overclocking the computer and stressing the motherboard chipset.

Btw is this an AMD64 motherboard? If yes I do recommend you to visit www.amdmb.com, there is a great forum there, and quite active too with separate forums for every major vendor/manufacturor. Awesome place for people who want to ask general and not so general topics.

 

[Spectral Glider]

Ahh its probably a cheap fan. and small cheap fans rotate at a very high speed causing a lot of sound and noise. Has it allways been noisy or just recently? You can clean the fan with a vacuum cleaner, the vacuum cleaner should blow out air and not the other way around. But still this is a temporary solution as your fan is probably dying, slowly dying. Getting a replacement is best. Does the fan have a heatsink below it? If not it might be better to remove the fan altogether and glue a heatsink on the chip instead. I dont think it would be any problem as long as you arent overclocking the computer and stressing the motherboard chipset.

Btw is this an AMD64 motherboard? If yes I do recommend you to visit www.amdmb.com, there is a great forum there, and quite active too with separate forums for every major vendor/manufacturor. Awesome place for people who want to ask general and not so general topics.

It just started making the noise a few days ago. Strangely, it makes the most noise when I first boot it up. Took me awhile to get around to seeing which fan it was. I cleared out the dust with compressed air, thinking that might solve the problem, but it didn't. Didn't try vacuuming it though. Maybe I should give that a shot.

I have the exact same board as the one pictured, but for some reason, the fan on mine is slightly different from the one in that pic. It has a round heat sink that's both underneath and surrounds the fan. Actually, this is my second version of the board. First one was identical in every way to the one in the pic, but the keyboard port went bad. It was still under warranty so they sent me a new board. This one has the slightly different fan with surrounding heat sink. It's not an AMD64 board though, just a P4 2.8. The board's about a year old as of this month.

 

[Spectral Glider]

Just to update for the heck of it. The fan is going, it's NBFAN1 on the motherboard. The PC shut off three times when trying to boot this morning, because, as I found in the bios, that's what it is set to do. The fan speed of course showed up as 0. When I reached in and spun the fan myself, it started up. It's working for the time being now, I suspect the motor is shot in it. Probably after I shut the machine off it'll die again. Will have to pick up a replacement I guess. Man, that's two things that went down on this type of board in a year. Guess I learned the hard way.

 

[Shompola]

Sorry to hear that mate. But yah these fans are crap. Invest in a better fan I guess. Btw is there a lot of dust in your room? Maybe dust eventually killed it.

 

[Spectral Glider]

It was pretty dusty in there, so I suppose it's possible. After doing some searching online today though, apparantely it's a common problem with those ABIT boards, the ISs and the ICs. Their fans are simply too cheap. Some people have said that perhaps some sewing machine oil would prolong it. I guess I could try it, I get the feeling that this one isn't worth trying to save though. I think I found one on Newegg by Thermaltake for $12 that will work.

 

[golem]

heh.. funny thing.. i have this board too, and my motherboard fan has fallen completely off the chip. Cant find my thermal tape though, so too lazy to stick it back on right now. Still runs stable for some reason

 

[CabbageRed]

How important is it on this motherboard? If your case has good cooling and you are not pushing it too hard (o/c) then you should be fine without out it as is the case with golem. If the board is refusing to boot when it is removed, see if killing any fan control options work or try plugging a case fan into the motherboard fan's connection.

 

[Spectral Glider]

Another update. Got a link from ABIT that has replacement fans for $6 plus $5 for shipping. Maybe after market would be a better option though. I'm still waiting it out till the end of the week when I talk to a buddy who builds PCs on the side, he may have a spare.

As for running it without it, I thought about that. You can set the bios so that the PC doesn't shut down upon detection of the fan failure. I'm not overclocking and I do have two other fans that I can plug into the side of my case. But I've heard conflicting reports where some people say they run ok without it and then others say you should never run a machine without cooling on the northbridge. So, like so many other things, who do you listen to? This fan is definitely cooked though.

 

[Dkong]

Just put on a passive cooling solution, like a pound of metal from Zalman. It should prove enough for a chipset cooler and it won't make any sound at all.