North Bridge Chipset fan failure

[jonro]

Hi i recently bought the motherboard in my sig and the North Bridge Chipset fan has failed, it started to make a screeching like noise and slowly over a period of hours came to a hult it seems machanical and not voltage related as all voltages have remaind steady and stayed at thier normal rates. My question is can i keep running my pc until i get a replacement? I have a side case fan blowing directly onto the fan and heatsink.

I have posted a picture of my motherboard so ppl get an idea of what the heatsink and fan look like, its the blue heatsink with a small fan in the middle directly below the cpu socket and i have regularly touched the heatsink and its not even warm.So help with this would be really great and much thanks in advance.

[RJ]

You can get rid of the fan altogether. It's unnecessary. The northbridge of the Intel 865PE Chipset only needs passive cooling, so all it needs is a heatsink.

Abit is as far I know the only manufacturer who installs a fan on an Intel Northbridge. No other manufacturer does that. I have an Asus P4P800, also Intel 865 Chipset, and it doesn't have that fan.

Since you even have a fan blowing on this area, do yourself a favor and remove the northbridge fan, and don't install a new one. Really, you don't need it. Even if you had no side case fan blowing air on it.

RJ

[Redfallon]

It would appear Abit is having a little quality control problem with these fans. Reference this thread. You could RMA the board, or someone said Abit would simply send you a new fan if you call them. As RJ said, you don't really need the fan, but if you are or plan on OCing, I'd recommend it.