VIA KT400 cooling fan

[Chuck]

The small cooling fan on the KT400 chip has ceased spinning. I work in a
dusty environment, fans go often for me.

It's a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP board and the fan is the small one under the
Gigabyte 8X AGP tag. I'm gonna replace it ASAP, but is it ok to run it
without the fan? I have no way that I know of to monitor that chip temp.

 

[kony]

The small cooling fan on the KT400 chip has ceased spinning. I work in a
dusty environment, fans go often for me.

A drop of heavyweight oil in the bearing might revive it,
especially if it's a sleeve-bearing fan. If a ball-bearing, oil
might still work but make it incredibly loud and short-lived.

It's a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP board and the fan is the small one under the
Gigabyte 8X AGP tag. I'm gonna replace it ASAP, but is it ok to run it
without the fan? I have no way that I know of to monitor that chip temp.

See if oil gets it running again... if it still won't run, take
fan off and leave heatsink base on, so more air flows over the
metal. You might find that a CPU heatsink exhausting a fair
amount of air towards the northbridge 'sink is enough to keep it
stable, as KT400 wasn't a particularly hot-running northbridge...
most(?) KT400 boards don't have an actively cooled northbridge.
That is not to suggest it should be ran long-term with only the
base, fanless portion of it's current heatsink but it's not a
critical problem... ie- not a reason to keep system turned off
till replaced, at worst it'd be instable if overheating, which
could vary based on how well your case is cooled, it's ambient
temp.

Considering your "dusty environment" you ought to consider using
a passive replacement cooler instead, like this:

http://www.svcompucycle.com/zanoco.html

Or if you have an old Pentium 1 era heatsink you could take the
fan off of it and permanently mount it with thermal epoxy.

 

[Chuck]

It's a Gigabyte GA-7VAXP board and the fan is the small one under the

See if oil gets it running again... if it still won't run, take
fan off and leave heatsink base on, so more air flows over the
metal. You might find that a CPU heatsink exhausting a fair
amount of air towards the northbridge 'sink is enough to keep it
stable, as KT400 wasn't a particularly hot-running northbridge...
most(?) KT400 boards don't have an actively cooled northbridge.
That is not to suggest it should be ran long-term with only the
base, fanless portion of it's current heatsink but it's not a
critical problem... ie- not a reason to keep system turned off
till replaced, at worst it'd be instable if overheating, which
could vary based on how well your case is cooled, it's ambient
temp.

Considering your "dusty environment" you ought to consider using
a passive replacement cooler instead, like this:

http://www.svcompucycle.com/zanoco.html

Thanks for the detailed answer. I'm guessing it's a $5 fan, I'm just gonna
replace it. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't harm it by running it with no
fan.

 

[~misfit~]

Thanks for the detailed answer. I'm guessing it's a $5 fan, I'm just
gonna replace it. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't harm it by
running it with no fan.

Strangely, at least here in New Zealand, 40mm fans are four times the price
of 80mm fans and seem to make twice the noise. They all seem to run at 5,000
rpm too.