Noisy PC

bush

My pc starting sounding like a car engine last week. First i thought it was the hard drive but when i opened it up it sounded like it was coming from the cpu fan so i bought a new one. I put it in yesterday and the noise was still there, waste of money.
Anyway i noticed a little small fan on the motherboard right beside the cpu fan and realised it was this little bastard making the noise.
I put some oil on it and now its ok, still seems a bit noisy but maybe im just being paranoid and now that i think of it it made this noise when i booted up one time not long after i bought it and never thought anything again till now

What does this fan do and do i really need, it seems so small that it couldnt do very much. Where can i get a new one for it?

Motherboard is an abit nf7m by the way

Diddy Kong

its the fan for the northbridge/southbridge (cant remember which), you can get a passive heatsink for it from the usual shops, you should be able to pick up a less noisy fan either

bush

Thanks for the reply but what do you mean by passive heat sink?

jester77

Passive heatsinks don't have a fan. Zalman do good passive heatsinks, if you're motherboard is a pentium board you would have to stick the zalman on as they don't come with the necessary connections otherwise you can screw them in. (Might have to take out the mb for this, not sure.)

Here is a link to the zalmans:
http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/code_list.asp?code=014

The blue one is better but if you're board is an intel type then you can only use the gold heatsink and it needs to be permantly glued on.

bush

The board is athlon xp type, have a 2800 in it.

Ive been looking on ebay at that blue one and yer man says that it doenst work with motherboards with onboard graphics. Mine has onboard graphics, is it just this model or will none of these heatsinks work with my motherboard so you know?

jester77

The blue zalman will do the trick. And they are cheap as well. Just remember to clean the chip and use thermal grease before applying it. Not sure if you need to take out the mb to replace it.

If you are worried about the chip running warm then you could replace it with the following heatsink.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=301816&cks=PRL

It's a good performer but expensive plus you need to take out the mb to attach it.

BadCharlie

Would you be able to get a passive heatsink from lets say PC world ?

jester77

The zalman's are not recommended for boards that have built in graphics, don't know why. Maybe the northbridge runs hotter on these boards. I don't know of any other passive heatsinks.

Is your board still under warranty, you could get Abit to send you a replacement fan.