chip fan speed

[st demon 4]

on start up i keep getting notification on screen that the chip fan speed is to low and to proceed press F1.i then get through but the fan noise fluctuates fast and slow ,can you help or advise

[plmokmm]

Can you provide some more information like the mboard, cpu and if you have an after market fan?

[Sema4]

I get the same thing with my ASUS motherboard. If it's an ASUS, you will probably find 2 settings in the BIOS that will cause this type of behaviour.

One says 'warn on CPU fan fail' which makes the computer monitor the rotational speed the CPU fan.

The other options will say something like 'Cool and Quiet' (if your using an AMD CPU) and Im sure Intel boards have a similar option to control the speed of the CPU fan depending on the heat in the CPU and the load it's under.

With my ASUS board, when I have both these options set to ON, when I turn the computer on the CPU is stone cold, and the BIOS tells the cooling fan on the CPU that it's not needed as the CPU is cold, so the fan is either not turning at all, or turning very slowly.

This then causes the BIOS to generate an error when it checks the to see if the CPU fan has failed as it's hardly turning because the CPU is cold.... this is when I get the 'press F1' message during start up.

If you boot the computer with the side of the case open, you will be able to watch the fan and see if this is whats going on.

As soon as windows starts to load, the CPU will start to work harder and will get warm, then the fan will speed up automatically and it will speed up and slow down as required by the CPU in order to maintain the correct temp.

Does this sound like what you have ?

If so, boot in to the BIOS and have a look to see if you have these 'CPU temp controls fan speed' and 'warn on CPU fan fail' type settings and see if they are both on.

If so, then this behaviour is normal and is nothing to worry about.

To be honest however, you are more likely to hear your graphic card fan, over the top of your CPU fan, as graphic card fans usually spin really fast for a shot time during boot up, then they slow down again, this is also normal behaviour, it depends what your graphic card is and what size fan is on it.

What hardware are you using ?

[st demon 4]

Sema 4
i have an ASUS A8N -SLI DELUXE Board,and the symptoms you describe are what i am getting,specially the slowing and speeding Fan symptons. Today when i started it did not happen for the first time in ages .However Mesh have indicated that they think the fan may be on the blink and are going to change it.My Graphic cards are Nvidia 6800xt,i am not well up on fan sizes,but it doesn't look that big. I don't know how to look into the Bios to check the fan settings ,perhaps you could advise.anyhow thank you for advising so far

[Sema4]

Is this a new problem that's recently started ? or has it been like this since you got the computer ? While it is possible that your fan is failing, it's equally possible that it's nothing to worry about.

I spent some time on the ASUS forums when I first got my board and this same thing gets posted regularly on their forums. When I first got my board, most people on the ASUS forum were having problems with their RAM timings, so I wrote a RAM Guide to help them out, I'm going to refer to that it now because it will let you see the BIOS screens you will see.

If you visit this page :- http://sema4.no-ip.com/MEMSPEED.htm

Scroll down to the first image which will show you when to press the DEL key to enter the BIOS screen. If you press the key but the computer boots normally, then you pressed it a little too late, try again and press it a little bit earlier or even tap it a few times over and over during the POST until you get the BIOS screen.

Scroll down to the next picture and you will see what the BIOS screen's look like, pay particular attention to the menu's at the top of the screen and use your Left/Right/Up/Down arrow keys to navigate... Pressing the right arrow once should take you to the ADVANCED menu and the screen should display something very similar to the picture on my website (might not be identical as my motherboard is slightly different from yours).

Once on the ADVANCED menu, the first option should be highlighted, CPU CONFIGURATION, if so, press ENTER and this will open a new screen which you can see when you scroll down to picture 3.

This is the CPU CONFIGURATION screen and you should see the option that says something like 'AMD K8 Cool 'n' Quiet Control', in my picture you will see it's DISABLED but yours will probable be ENABLED.

I suggest you set this option to DISABLED in order to test if your fan is failing or not, if you no longer see the 'fail' message at start up, then your fan is probably fine and it's only the 'cool and quiet' option thats making the fan turn too slowly at POST.

To set it to DISABLED, use the down arrow to highlight the line and press ENTER, then use the arrow keys to select DISABLED from the pop up window and press ENTER again. Once the pop up window has closed, press ESCAPE to return to the first BIOS menu screen.

Next, press F10 to save and close the BIOS, (it will probably ask you to confirm the save, select YES) the computer will automatically reboot.

Once this option is disabled, your CPU fan will run flat out at all times, so you will probably hear a little more noise that you are used to, but it shouldn't get faster and slower any more and you shouldn't get the 'fail' error either...

Please note that Cool and Quiet is a good thing, personally I consider the benefit of 'cool and quiet' to be worth more than the F1 at start up issue... so once you have confirmed that the problem goes away when you turn this option off, I would recommend you turn it back on again...

If you still hear a fan speed up and slow down during the startup, then it's probably your graphic card fan that you hear, again, this is normal behaviour for some GPU fans and is probably nothing to be concerned about.

Give this a whirl and see how it goes, if it cures the problem, great, if not, we will take it from there, don't forget to turn Cool & Quiet back on once your sure your fan is ok...

[st demon 4]

No ,this a new problem it only started about 3 weeks ago, i will follow your instructions and will report back thanks for the info,i have taken a print of your reply.

[st demon 4]

Just to let you know ,it was the chip fan that had failed ,it has been changed and now okay,the service is getting better.