Anyone had a 3-pin CPU Fan header stop working?

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2003
Posts
14,716
Location
London
Last night I swapped a mobo from one system into another but at some point during the swap the 3-pin CPU fan header has stopped working?

I've read about this but its never happened to me before. I have tried a few fans on that header and none work (they all work fine on any other fan header).

I'm wondering maybe if its worth stripping the motherboard out and having a closer look in case it is a short of something else weird?

Been working fine for months so I'm not sure why it just quit?

I can work around this issue but I am wondering if this is a small sigh of impending mobo meltdown lol? :D
 
It might have fused. There are two ways of spotting this - the first is a nasty burning smell (solder fuse) and the other is to reset CMOS (self-resetting fuse). If it's a solder fuse it's basically fubared, but many newer motherboards have the self-resetting fuses.
 
WJA96 said:
It might have fused. There are two ways of spotting this - the first is a nasty burning smell (solder fuse) and the other is to reset CMOS (self-resetting fuse). If it's a solder fuse it's basically fubared, but many newer motherboards have the self-resetting fuses.
Click to expand...
Ok thanks Walter. The machine is just running some prime stability tests at the moment but as soon as that's finished I will look closer. I had a peek at it I don't see anything burnt or melted?

Just one thing, when you say 'reset CMOS' do u mean the option 'Load Setup Defaults' or do u mean a hard reset using the jumper on the mobo?.
 
This might be a stupid reply, but it's not mean't to be. Could it be smart fan control in bios, thinking your cpu is running cool, and shutting down the fan speed?
 
No that's a good reply but I should have mention this is an Athlon 64 system and Q-Fan has been disabled (it's an ASUS A8N-E nForce-4 Ultra).

Even with Q-fan enabled the fan should still be turning at about 900rpm (down from 2700rpm full whack) which the board has done for the past few months with no issue.

Everything else is working great so I will follow WJA's advice and try a hard CMOS clear to see if that helps.
 
Last edited:
Ok just a quick update. I took the system apart because it was niggling me the CPU-Fan header not working. Looking the at fan-header I can't see anything out of the ordinary?

3pincpufanheaderstopworow1.jpg


However after despatching Mr Finger to inspect the crime scene he came up with a important clue?

3pincpufanheaderstopworwt8.jpg


Now I'm not sure why but there seemed to be tiny flecks of metal shavings around the mobo? never seen this before but obviously there are not desirable. Having a closer look it appears the shavings have come from the screw holes?

Look at the picture below, around the edge of the hole where the screws goes through, there are little silver-raised bobbles that have been scraped off? (I highlight one or two of them in yellow),

3pincpufanheaderstopworls5.jpg


Not sure how that happened? maybe I took to much steroids before tightning the screws?

Is that what those little red paper-washers are for? to prevent a screw shearing the bobbles off? I thought it was ok to just use a screw?

On top of this it appears when I swapped out the mobo, I took out an nForce board and replaced it with an nForce4 board and there was an extra standoff in the case that wasn't need for the new board :o

So anyway the fan-header is working again now but sadly it has lost the ability to monitor rpms?.

System is gone now but I'm still wondering how those metal shavings appeared? and if anyone uses the paper-washers?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom