Did I damaged my CPU-Fan or not?

[rebayona]

Fans (I have 5 on the case) were making a lot of noise, so I manually cleaned all of them, including the Variable Speed Fan Technology for Boxed Intel® Pentium® 4 Processors. They were really dirty, and noise decreased indeed. Since then noise disapeared but after a while I noticed that the CPU fan NEVER increased its speed again. A month later suddenly suffered weird restarts and stalls, and sometimes processor was at its 100% and the processor fan was running at the same speed. I installed Intel desktop utilities to realize it was over the temperature. My guess is that during the cleaning of the fan, and for what I read on

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/res...xcs/tech/tech_ref/factory_notes_all/35946.htm

I might have damaged the thermister.

I also read this ftp://download.intel.com/design/Pentium4/datashts/303128.pdf, but can't be sure if I damaged it or not.

My question is: How can I test the fan to make sure that is the problem? Also, is there a way to know if there is permanent damage to the CPU?

For example, Is there an utility to test fan speeds? (increasing it just for test purposes I mean).

Thanks a lot.

 

[Ed2020]

I'm not sure about fan speed testing utilities, but I'm pretty sure P4s underclock themselves if they overheat to prevent damage. You may well still notice weird behaviour, but your CPU is probably fine.

Ed Metcalfe.

Please do not feed the trolls.....

 

[firewolfrl]

the best fix is to get a new CPU fan

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=493

good luck

 

[G0AOZ]

Thermistors are usually fairly durable devices, but tell us how you cleaned the fans and what makes you think you damaged the thermistor.

A quick trial would be to removing the fan and thermistor from the computer. Then gently blowing a source of warm/hot air over the thermistor. Fan speed should increase almost immediately.

If in doubt, Firewolfrl's suggestion is the best bet...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[rebayona]

Hi guys, thanks for your replies. I wrote to Intel's support and I received a reply from a "human" in only two hours. Impressive.

Their reply: "To verify on whether the fan is working or not, you may test it on another motherboard and enable the fan control. If after doing this it still does not work we could replace the fan as long as you can provide all the information located on top of your processor"

First question: How do I enable fan control? It is on the BIOS or what?

To reply your questions: Ed2020: thanks for the good news. Reading tech docs from Intel make me realize that too, at least it might be only the fan.

Firewolfrl: Thanks for the tip. I don't live in the US but if prices here are too high I'll consider your option.

G0AOZ: I cleaned them on the washing machine, but using "soft clothes mode" .

Seriously, I used a toothbrush to gently remove dust from the blades. I don't even know where the thermistor is, but after a little google search i realized where it might be. I'll take a look.

I'll try to make your test removing the fan and blowing a warm/hot air source over the thermistor ... but will it work without any power source? How can I tell if it increased its speed because of hot and not because of the airflow?

Thanks for your help.

I'm worried, since when I played games like FIFA2006 the processor's fans genarally went crazy. I played last night and nothing happened. But temperature was OK, close to the limit but always under it

The only changes I made that day: I removed CPU fan and cleaned it. I was filthy. I also removed front case fan, the other three fans were clean since I cleaned them recently. And now that PC was off, I installed extra 512MB RAM I had, so total system memory now is 1.5GB. I don't think extra RAM will make the processor to work less than before, but I thought it would be something to mention here. I wonder if just cleaning fans had such impact on system's temperature... same for extra RAM.

 

[wahnula]

A quick trial would be to removing the fan and thermistor from the computer.

I believe Roger meant keeping DC power applied to the fan, perhaps with another PC or PSU.

Tony

 

[G0AOZ]

Thanks Tony, I should have perhaps been more specific in my reply...

Yes, a separate 12vdc supply to the fan. However, if the thermistor is buried inside the fan housing then it might be difficult to check with my method. However, you could do it by removing the fan and heatsink assembly complete, then applying an external 12vdc to the fan, and then carefully blast hot air from something like a paint stripper onto the underside of the heatsink. This would then not interfere with the airflow from the fan.

For all the effort involved, you'd probably do better to just replace the fan assembly...

ROGER - G0AOZ.