Wednesday, November 16, 2005
ASUS A8V-E Deluxe Chipset Fan
While I have been away from this Blog posting thingy I have purchased and installed 2 new PCs. In fact it was this that forced me to resolve my wireless aerial issue.
The first of these machines I use to drive a LCD television. It is an AMD 3200+ machine with the above mentioned ASUS A8V-E Deluxe motherboard. While I have been reasonably happy with its performance I have found it very noisy. I have it in a cupboard with an open back to expel hot air and holes in the bottom to let in new cold air.
A few weeks ago it started to periodically make horrible grinding noises. This is never a good thing. A quick inspection showed it to be the chipset fan. This is a small 4cm fan that spins at over 9000rpm to keep the northbridge/southbridge chip cool.
A quick scan on the internet led me to a number of discussions where people had similar problems on this and a couple of other ASUS boards. A call to ASUS confirmed they were happy to replace the fan (not the board) under warranty as long as I could provide the serial number of the board. I had some trouble locating it due to the inaccessibility of the machine and the fact I did not want to unplug everything. In the end I did not find it (apparently it is near the main power plug). However it is also on the box which I do have so I grabbed it from there.
I then dropped by their support site in Sydney in Silverwater. Walked in stated my problem and the guy returned in 2 mins flat with a new fan. On my way out of the building I had the uncomfortable feeling the fan was not right. While I did not have my old fan there I was sure the mountings were in the wrong place.
So I went back in and another 5 minutes later he came out with a heatsink. Apparently they dont use fans anymore but instead use a 3 cm high heatsink. This is great news on the noise front but as I walked out of the store I became concerned again that there was no head transfer goo on the heatsink and I didnt have any at home.
15 mins later I had another heatsink with the goo attached and on my way home.
The next challenge was to get the old fan off. The right way to do this is to remove the motherboard and squeeze the back side of the plastic pins than hold the fan down. I just pulled them out with a pair of pliers. This means I wont be able to remount the fan but hey I cant imagine why I would want to at any rate and it did not dame the board.
Of course getting the pins off is only part of the problem. It was still stuck to the chip. So I unplugged the fan power lead and turned on the machine. 3 mins later the fan easily twisted off the motherboard.
Attaching the heatsink was a breeze and now I have an incredibly quiet machine.
The first of these machines I use to drive a LCD television. It is an AMD 3200+ machine with the above mentioned ASUS A8V-E Deluxe motherboard. While I have been reasonably happy with its performance I have found it very noisy. I have it in a cupboard with an open back to expel hot air and holes in the bottom to let in new cold air.
A few weeks ago it started to periodically make horrible grinding noises. This is never a good thing. A quick inspection showed it to be the chipset fan. This is a small 4cm fan that spins at over 9000rpm to keep the northbridge/southbridge chip cool.
A quick scan on the internet led me to a number of discussions where people had similar problems on this and a couple of other ASUS boards. A call to ASUS confirmed they were happy to replace the fan (not the board) under warranty as long as I could provide the serial number of the board. I had some trouble locating it due to the inaccessibility of the machine and the fact I did not want to unplug everything. In the end I did not find it (apparently it is near the main power plug). However it is also on the box which I do have so I grabbed it from there.
I then dropped by their support site in Sydney in Silverwater. Walked in stated my problem and the guy returned in 2 mins flat with a new fan. On my way out of the building I had the uncomfortable feeling the fan was not right. While I did not have my old fan there I was sure the mountings were in the wrong place.
So I went back in and another 5 minutes later he came out with a heatsink. Apparently they dont use fans anymore but instead use a 3 cm high heatsink. This is great news on the noise front but as I walked out of the store I became concerned again that there was no head transfer goo on the heatsink and I didnt have any at home.
15 mins later I had another heatsink with the goo attached and on my way home.
The next challenge was to get the old fan off. The right way to do this is to remove the motherboard and squeeze the back side of the plastic pins than hold the fan down. I just pulled them out with a pair of pliers. This means I wont be able to remount the fan but hey I cant imagine why I would want to at any rate and it did not dame the board.
Of course getting the pins off is only part of the problem. It was still stuck to the chip. So I unplugged the fan power lead and turned on the machine. 3 mins later the fan easily twisted off the motherboard.
Attaching the heatsink was a breeze and now I have an incredibly quiet machine.
