I have two Asus A7N266-E motherboards that seem to have the same problem. At startup time, they will often have a high-pitched noise coming from the northbridge fans. For one motherboard, the noise goes away in a few seconds and it seems to run normally. For the other, I need to reboot and then the noise typically doesn't occur. Although they are the same motherboard product, the northbridge fans have different labels. If these fans wear out, could that cause damage to the rest of the system? From the other comments I've seen in this thread, it seems like it could be a good idea to simply disconnect the fans, and maybe replace with a passive heatsink...? -- Phil Jackson.
I would simply unscrew the fans from their heat sinks and remove them from the system. Hold the heatsinks while doing it so you donc’t work the thermal compound loose from the Northbridge. After monitoring the computer for about a half an hour, to let the thermals settle-out, I would then feel the Norhthbridge with my hand to see how hot it got. Be careful, some chips can get hot enough to burn flesh. I do not think these will. If they are just moderately warm, as they are on the 8KHA+, I would then feel comfortable that no damage will be done by continuing to run them that way. You may want to stress the computer by running some benchmarks and see how hot they get then. Of course, Larry does not overclock computers. Larry
My Northbridge fan was making some awful noises last night and upon inspection I noticed that it had stopped spinning. I shutdown immediately and removed the fan - it no longer freely spins. System details in sig. Could anyone suggest a replacement? The fan was situated atop a passive cooler so do I even need the fan? I searched NewEgg.com but surprisingly found no northbridge fans and a quick search for Northbridge Fan on this forum produced no results.
