Buried frame fans - obtaining?

[George Macdonald]

I'm sure we've all had a nice heatsink/fan whose fan went bad and it is
aggravating trying to find something to replace either the fan or the whole
thing. Just when you find a reasonable looking heatsink/fan with hopefully
the right spacing to fit the holes in the PCB and the right height, you
find it has only two wires.<grrr>

In some cases the fan frame is part of a larger plastic molding but many
of the current chipset/vga coolers have what is known as a "buried frame
fan" or in some cases a "bury frame fan"[pidgin English version ?].
This style mounts to the heatsink with three screws, one on each of three
legs in a Y configuration.

Now the problem is how to get those damned things. I've found a 45mm with
2-wire here http://www.directron.com/ec4510m12sb.html but that's the only
one I've found in the smaller size. That will fit my video card with the
oddball heatsink but I've had a couple of chipset coolers burn out fans
recently and they had 30mm 3-wire buried frame fans, which are impossible
to find. I've looked at several fan manufacturer sites and zero!!... and
yet, somebody must make those things.

The things sold as "chipset coolers" are often the wrong shape/size or hole
spacing and rarely have 3-wires. Since the above mbrds were still under
warranty, eventually an e-mail to MSI, the mbrd mfr, brought me three
replacement heatsink/fans of the same design but with a slightly slower
running fan. Hopefully they'll last better but if anyone has a source for
replacement fans, I'd like to hear about it... thanks.

 

[tom]

I have faced the same situation in the past. What I did isn't for
everyone.

I bought a standard heatsink at a local electronics store and installed
the heatsink on the ASIC using thermal adhesive. I then installed a
small 3 wire fan over the top of the heatsink using a couple of sheet
metal screws. The red, black and white wires have to be on the same
pins. Now the fan speed isn't as important as the CFM (volume of air)
the fan delivers.

The only down side is that it uses two card positions because the
standard fans (25x40x40 is what I used) are too tall. Those fans do
deliver *lots* of air.

Tom S.