Control the speed of a chipset fan? (with Asus A8N)

[Shmee150]

Hi,

I'm on an Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe, and am wondering if there's any way to manually control the chipset fan by software?

I plan on ultimately buying a hardware solution, but is there something I can do temporarily to slow it down from it's 9krpm to be quieter?

Thanks,

ShMeE

[skuzgib]

Mess around with speedfan?

I just gave in and bought a zalman nb-47j. Does the job admirably

[Rohan]

Nope speedfan won't work. Just get the zalman and get it over with

[Shmee150]

I was about to say that speedfan isn't doing much!

Urmm, am I right that to fit the Zalman thingy you have to take the mobo completly out? That would be a bit of a pain!

ShMeE

[arthurleung]

Look on your motherboard and see if it use ITE chipset, if so you could try Smartguardian.

I believe there should be options in BIOS which you can set the fan to turn off/on/max at selected temperature. (At least it is on my DFI NF4-D)

[Rohan]

I was about to say that speedfan isn't doing much!

Urmm, am I right that to fit the Zalman thingy you have to take the mobo completly out? That would be a bit of a pain!

ShMeE

Yes unfortunately you will have to remove the motherboard out of the case. This is because you will need to squeeze the pins that hold down the heatsink from the back of the motherboard. It sure is a pain, I've had to do it myself twice already

[skuzgib]

It is a pain, but it's worth it.

[Shmee150]

Urmm, anybody know where the easiest place in the UK is to get one?

Thanks,

ShMeE

[Rohan]

I think OCUK is the best place to get the zalman NB47J. You should be able to get it including shipping for under £10

[Shmee150]

I've got one now, and I'm just trying to work out how on earth you take the original fan off???

Do you just force the pins out and permenantly destroy them? I can see how you could do this, but squeezing them in to push it through looks near to impossible

ShMeE

[BenW]

you need to squeeze them together at the back and push through. Get some pliers on them and push them partly through then push all the way through with fingers.

You may want to put a hair dryer on it first to loosen the thermal compound

[Shmee150]

Done as you suggested, and got everything plugged back in.

But

My screen doesn't even get a signal! What have I done blown up my 7800GTX?

ShMeE

[plesuvius]

Ok this chip you are changing the heatsink on is quite delicate. I heard some reports of people loosing their IDE ports after messing with this chip. Might be you have damaged the mobo somehow.

Still, by all means rebuild and troubleshoot it, could be something nice and simple like a cmos reset required or a power cable not plugged back into a card or the mobo.

BTW the stock fan is g-dawful. You need to realise the fins are like 0.5cm or less, so even if its fast, its just making noise lol. i just took teh fan off (and kept it!) and jury-rigged another chipset fan (2x size 1/4 noise) onto the stock heatsink. This fixed it, and brought the temps down!

oh and it flashes. which is nice.

[Shmee150]

It started working after many restarts fortunately

At least it's now lost the whinning noise and runs pretty quietly considering the spec

ShMeE