Computer technical advice sought.

[Jinx999]

The extraction fan on my computer isn't spinning.
Can anyone suggest probable causes and any advice on how to resolve this?

[Star Ranger4]

something like that is usually a replace on the fan fix. Now if thats a DIY repair depends on your case.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Sweno]

how easy would it be to replace this fan? is it built into the side of the computer case, or semi-perminanlty attached to a component?

Odds are the fan stopped working, cause they are built to be cheap.

If you have a voltage tester, you can make sure that power is still flowing down the lines. But my bet would be that the motor or ball bearing in the fan died.

But fans like this only cost around $5 depending on where you get them and how quiet you need them to be.

I don't know if you have a frys or radio-shack (or local equivalent thereof), but it should be easy enough to unscrew the fan from the mount and bring it with you when you go looking for a new one. The important bits are to make sure your new fan is the same size, has the same power connectors, and moves roughly the same amount of air.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[hmelton]

It had been my experience that most computer I have refurbished from a local school that the fans stop working because dust builds up on them and unbalances them causing extreme wear.

Check your CPU fan, video card fan and other fans including the Power supply fan and if they are dirty find out the recommended cleaning method and clean them as well.

If you set your computer on the floor or live in a very dusty location in general you will need to clean your computer case at least once every year.

Q-tips, alcohol and compressed air are my usual methods, but I have had to deal with pizza, peanut butter, crayons and other oddities.

I'd recommend a search for instructions on cleaning a computer, but here is a single web page with some decent instructions.



http://www.wikihow.com/Cl...the-Inside-of-a-Computer

howard melton

god bless

[robkelk]

Is the fan built into your power supply? (I've seen a few boxes where the power supply houses both its own and the computer's cooling fans.) If it is, then you might want to clean and/or replace that at the same time.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Jinx999]

Thanks. I did find the cleaning it and fiddling with the plug got it to work again. Given that my computer is, IIRC, six years old now, there's very little point in getting new parts, rather than replacing the whole thing sometime soon.

[Rod.H]

Meh, fan's are nearly as much of a consumer item for pc's as toner/ink for a printer. I know I've a small variety of case fans stored, just waiting on a use. Why do I have spare fans, well the first mod I tend to do to my main PC's case is replace the stock OEM fans with a better grade ones or additional if it's missing them. Still a 1U rack-mount server case continues to stump me on how to quite it down, a bunch of 40mm fans should do it.

--Rod.H

[robkelk]

The usual way to quiet down a 1U rack-mountable is to rack-mount it and close the rack's doors...

If you've got one of those monsters in a case and you really want to make it quieter, you're going to have to investigate water-cooling instead of air-cooling. This will void your warranty if implemented.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rod.H]

It's an eBay special, the warranty died a long time ago. Water-cooling believe it or not was my first thought-line of attack. It died after I discovered no one makes the parts I need, nor will anyone ever make them. If I want to watercool it, I'd have to do it old-school and make it all myself plus my metalwork skills suck.