CPU Fan not spinning

[Pelinox]

Hi

My brother need my old PC, so I've been busy preparing it, it's like 2-3 years old..

I turned it on and it was pretty loud. I opened it up to see what it was, and it was the CPU fan/heatsink making all the noise. So I found one I had laying around and installed it, making sure it actually fit, which it did.

I plugged the cabel to the CPU_Fan header, turned on the PC and the fan didn't spin..

It doesn't spin, but I can tell it's trying, once every 2-3 second it spin like 1/4 round, and then stops again. What's the cause of this, and how do I fix it?

 

[apeksdiver]

Have you tried another fan off the header?

I would guess the fan has packed up so a new fan will be required.

What heatsink is it? can you fit a replacement fan?

 

[JJimmyJ]

Have you tried it in one of the system fan ports? If it's a PWM it could be trying to run based off temp or voltage, in which case it won't spin until it reaches a certain heat.
Is it a Gigabyte motherboard perchance?

 

[Pelinox]

Have you tried another fan off the header?

I would guess the fan has packed up so a new fan will be required.

What heatsink is it? can you fit a replacement fan?

Well, it's the stock Intel fan/heatsink that comes with their CPUs, which I bought few months back. Thought I could just throw that into it, since, it's not gonna get used to anything but browising the internet.

Have you tried it in one of the system fan ports? If it's a PWM it could be trying to run based off temp or voltage, in which case it won't spin until it reaches a certain heat.
Is it a Gigabyte motherboard perchance?

It's an old ASUS P5K motherboard. Only the CPU_Fan is PWM, the rest is just normal 3-pin connectors. I have not tried the other, since, I mounted the heatsink before trying it, maybe that was a bit stupid

I honestly doubt it's BIOS have any fan control.. It's BIOS is just old, but I haven't looked, but now I will check. Could it be that it's because it's not working? Overnight, I used DBAN to erase its HDDs to a fresh install, so it's still without any OS.

Edit: OK, I think it just doesn't work.. Will find some cheap heatsink and install

 

[j.col]

iirc the stock fans will still fit a 3 pin fan header, just try it.
also i hope u removed the old paste off the cpu and applied some new paste before fitting the cooler?

 

[BrianB]

Even ancient boards support CPU fan control. I usually disable it because I never have PWM fans.

Strange that a fan would just stop working, never heard of this before.

If a fan isn't spinning, it's mostly going to be because it's not getting enough power. I would try all fan ports and also try a molex adapter if you have one.

Did you try getting the fan to spin by hand? Fans will try to spin at low volts but won't manage it until a certain amount of power gets though.

 

[Pelinox]

iirc the stock fans will still fit a 3 pin fan header, just try it.
also i hope u removed the old paste off the cpu and applied some new paste before fitting the cooler?

Yea, I cleared the paste, but the fan should still spin regardless of paste or not

Even ancient boards support CPU fan control. I usually disable it because I never have PWM fans.

Strange that a fan would just stop working, never heard of this before.

If a fan isn't spinning, it's mostly going to be because it's not getting enough power. I would try all fan ports and also try a molex adapter if you have one.

Did you try getting the fan to spin by hand? Fans will try to spin at low volts but won't manage it until a certain amount of power gets though.

I'm not sure what the problem was. I took it out and tried other connectors, both PWN and 3pin, and it kept doing that same thing, where it would try to spin, but not fully do a round. IIRC, the wires were not the same colour.
Anyway, I went to a local shop and bought a replacement, which had the same coloured wires, and it works..

 

[BrianB]

Glad you got it sorted at least.