BleepingComputer.com: My Fan Is Dieing Can I Just Unplug It And Not Use It?

Hi, My fan is dieing and it squeeks and makes loud sounds.
Can I just inplug it from he power and not use it?

This fan is on the motherboard I dont know what its doing anyways I bought a motherboard for a friend and it didnt have a fan like this...
Heres an image of the motherboard



Its the fan in the middle, Can I just unplug it?

Just for info. I have one large Fan pulling in air from the front. One pushing out the side for the CPU and one pulling out the back of the case. If that helps in addition to this bad one thats making loud noises

i'm 98% sure that's cooling the north bridge.....as long as you are not overclocked, you should be alright to unplug but to make sure i would either google "north bridge fan" or wait for a second opinion from some else on here...if it were me, i would unplug it in case you wanted to know my thoughts

ok thanks, I want to get a few people to tell that to me also hahaha, just to make sure dont want to over heat it and mess every thing up

IMHO, don't unplug it. It's the fan that's helping to cool the heat sink (that silver metal grill-like thing) over the Chipset. My CPU is sitting at 49C/121F right now, and I booted up less than 5 min ago. (I'm running a bit warm because my computer is in a hot room, so I have a monitor in my systray to watch it.)

But my point is, if you turn that fan off you could burn up your Chipset in minutes, if not seconds. I know you said you've got other fans, but it seems to me they are just cooling the surface air in the case, which will help. But I don't think they will do much to draw the actual heat away from the chipset like the heat sink does. (Think of it like a sponge absorbing water.)

I replaced my heat sink about a year ago. My old one got noisy as you describe, so the fan motor in yours is probably failing. Or it might just need oiling, which can be done. But heat sinks don't cost that much. You'd be better off getting a new one.

When I went to a computer shop to replace the noisy old fan, they told me that they had the fans for sale separately for a few bucks, but they'd been scavenged from other units. So I opted to replace the whole thing and upgraded to about twice what my system required.

Others can give you the more technical jargon about why this is important, but I think I'm correct in my opinion.

If you only see one fan...mounted on that board...rest assured that it's for the heatsink/CPU.

If you read at all on such, you will find that they are essential.

It's your system, you can do anything with it.

Louis

If the fan is disabled, and there is no method to shut the motherboard down if it overheats, then you could damage the board beyone repair by removing it.

The fans are a lot cheaper than a motherboard - just look for the same size and the same plug for it.

Look at it this way. The design engineers put it there for a reason. Why risk it?
Mark

Agreed with all of the above. If you didn't need it, it wouldn't be there.

Sneakycyber, on Feb 2 2008, 04:59 PM, said:

ha ha ha..i'm laughin my but off right now...not because i disagree in anyway (although if it were my board and i could monitor temps i'd unplug it) but i just thought about what you said and then i thought about some youtube vids i was looking at last night with people having like 20 fans and watercooling and stuff like that...ba ha ha ha.....now THAT is what you DON'T need!

If it is squeaking it won't last very much longer. Those small high-RPM fans on motherboards generally don't last very long. When the fan on my motherboard went south I replaced with just a heatsink. You can usually find a northbridge heatsinks for under $10.

how do I know yo get the right size and every thing?
I want to get one from newegg.com

Well...I think you need to decide if you're just getting a fan or a fan/heatsink.

In any case, fans/heatsinks are made to fit certain processors and fans will be denoted as "CPU fans" if they are for that function.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....p;name=MASSCOOL

Louis

PoweredByGoogle, on Feb 3 2008, 06:59 PM, said:

Chipset fans
http://www.newegg.com/
Mark

you need that fan to keep the northbridge cool, they can get extremely hot if not cooled. you need to shut down the pc before you destroy the mobo, and get a replacement chipset HSF immediately.