A8n-e noisy northbridge fan replacement.

[J T]

I believe Teho has (or had) an Asus A8 motherboard. Mine has the noisy little fan and I'm planning to replace it with a Zalman heatsink thingy.

Is it easy to do? Anyone here done it?

[Demon Cleaner]

I only changed the fan on my gfx card with a Zalman. That was very easy. If you're going to change the CPU fan, make sure there's enough room in your case, as the Zalman fans are very big.

[J T]

Just finished, and despite a few hairy moments everything seems to be running well, so far so good.

When I put the PC together I'd screwed the motherboard in too tightly and so some of the stand-off came out when I was unscrewing to remover the mobo earlier. This lead to stress and a screwdriver touching the board a few times but luckily not too forcefully :nugget:

The fan was quite hard to pull off and made crunching noised which wasn't too reassuring, and the brackets for the zalman heatsink were tiny and fiddly.

Hope I applied the paste right, tried to make it a thin even smear.

It's WAY quiter now. I'm happy it's done and I don't appear to have ****ed anything up.

[J T]

Nadgers!

No sound coming out of the onboard sound gubbins (tried speakers and headphones). All appears to be working properly as far as windows is concerned. Not sure what caused this, other than not connecting the front-of-case-mounted jacks which I never used anyway. Couldn't be that, could it?

[Teho]

That's right, I have the A8N-E board as well. And I've also replaced that fan for a heatsink (the chip fan, right?), about half a year ago. Not because it was noisy though, but because it stopped working at all. I didn't have any problems doing it, allthough you're right about assembling the heatsink brackets being damn fiddly. And only having a half right thumb didn't make it any easier! ;) Mostly I don't notice but there are times when I miss that fingertip, and that was definitely one of those times! :lol:

Everything turned out fine for me though, didn't get that issue with the sound you're talking about. No idea what could've caused it either, sorry. :huh2:

[J T]

the chip fan, right

Yeah, the little tiny fan fixed on to the mobo.


Nadgers!

No sound coming out of the onboard sound gubbins (tried speakers and headphones). All appears to be working properly as far as windows is concerned. Not sure what caused this, other than not connecting the front-of-case-mounted jacks which I never used anyway. Couldn't be that, could it?

Turns out, it could and indeed was. The signal is sent out to the front jacks and then returned to the rear jack (that is fixed to the motherboard). Jumpers would have done the trick more easily than the fiddly wires but I don't have any.

All working now, and I have learnt something today :)

[Buleste]

How many screws did you have left over once you put everything back together?

[J T]

How many screws did you have left over once you put everything back together?

Surprisingly, none.

Although I did leave out a few of the extra socket plates (game/joystick and some other port) as I just don't use them.

[Buleste]

You must've done something wrong. It's a universal law that only good jobs have screws left over so that you think you've made a cock up. If you have nop screws left then something is bound to go pear shaped.;)

[J T]

:D

There's a whole bag of screws I didn't use the first time. They must be spares.

They must be, right?

:whistle:

[Harrison]

Ah! The jumpers on the internal audio headers are fitted as standard on the Asus boards to bridge the two connections, so glad you worked that one out. Can be hard to sometimes work some problems like that out as they are not always obvious.

Happily I spent more on my Motherboard and got the Asus A8N-SLI Platinum. No motherboard fans ;)

[Bloodwych]

Sounds like you've been in the wars J T.

I've had northbridge fans go bad and just pulled the plug. They seem for show on most boards as it doesn't get that warm in my experience (the nforce4 may be different).

Screws in general, especially on PCs, really don't need to be that tight. Most people over tighten screws way too much!

[J T]

Screws in general, especially on PCs, really don't need to be that tight. Most people over tighten screws way too much!

Yep, I certainly did when I first built the PC :(

The new heatsink is hot to the touch, so it must be working. Not sure I'd like to leave the chip with nothing on.

Then again, the fan on it was rubbish. It was just a fan thermal-pasted onto the chip. No proper heatsink part - just a fan blowing on a flat bit of metal. Very crude.

If I get a new motherboard in future I'll definitely look for one of the fancy pre-fitted heatpipe dealies.

Now thinking about replacing the GFX card fan as that is now the noisiest. Compared to how it was, however, it's bliss.