Ever replaced CPU fan on a socket 775?

A year ago I replaced my desktop's dual core with a quad core, making me so happy I forgot about the increasingly loud fan which had no place to oil. I paid close attention to cleaning the old gunk off the heatsink, then took a Dremel wire wheel to really encourage the surfaces for Arctic Silver (the metallic kind). Now it's definitly time for a new fan, but it's not obvious if this fan is epoxied to the heat sink or what:

This is pretty much it: Metal screws holding assembly to motherboard (not clips) and I couldn't see screws holding the fan to the heatsink yesterday outside in the sun with a magnifying glass. To be fair they're still in the case.

Wondered if any of you have experience with HP Benicia fans like that? Too bad my AMD socket 939 fan isn't swappable or I'd change it in a minute.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-

Joey here, your computational hypochondriac. It's the most clever little tiny clips that hold the fan in place, they clip around the bottom lip of the fan! So I got a drop of sewing machine oil in there for now and ordered a new fan from China, avoiding new heat sink $$$ and messing with a perfect Arctic Silver job last summer.

Joey Tip™ -updated- If you've ever seen the "miracle" of Rain-X on your windshield, or think about all the America's Cup yachts that have a micro coating that help them win...

What I'm saying is to Armor All every fan blade in your world. It makes such a big difference and I've been doing it for almost 20 years. It really is worth it. It throws more air and even house fans have this 3D air movement quality. Plus like when it's a computer fan you get less dust sticking to it and it's a better that way for long term reliability.

If you're wondering why I'm advising this in a bad fan topic, it's a fan inside a donated computer. The previous owner had a drinking problem and it had so many viruses it ran hot for years and even the onboard video is burned out. So this wasn't a botched Armor All experiment. Drop of oil and Armor All and it's nice again (till the new one arrives).

Of course caution for computer fans, Armor All is a mild semiconductor so use a Q tip to clean it with alcohol or Windex first, dry, then Armor All carefully so it's wet, and either reapply or go over it with a dry Q tip. Make sure all of the blade is coated such as the edge that cuts through the air.

Neat aye?

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2016 10:52PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

Joey,

Great tip! does it make the fan noiser at all?

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

Probably 1/2 of 1 db less loud because it's redirecting the air more than rubbing it. It's a strange phenomenon. I'm not saying it's limited to Armor All, because originally I had this other brand called Something Better. It's a foaming protectant and maybe a slight hair better than Armor All.
There's examples of things that deal with air all over the place, like airplanes; UPS used to advertise they clean their planes to save fuel. Even jet turbine engines improve with at least cleaning. Same thing, more thrust, less waste.

Then the other two places fans need lovin' too, decoupling rubber and silicone - on my desktop computers there's rarely any fan that lacks de-coupling. CPU fan and I cringe a little bit...

And then once a fan is broken in I like a yearly drop of Teflon lube.

But you think about capacitors and all the fragile parts in a computer, elevated temperature and electricity running through it no less - constant vibration is so bad for it it's like a car with its exhaust removed. It vibrates itself to death and is a drag the whole time you use it.

As for the Armor all, I beg anyone to try it on any house fan you have that has plastic blades. Then you'll do everything else lol

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2016 11:29PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

I surely will try this on my NSA325v2 (my one and only active cooling plug) . I can't stand the fan noise, hence my preference for these small plugs and other passive cooling ARM boards!

-bodhi
===========================
Forum Wiki
bodhi's corner (buy bodhi a beer)

If the fan has a "hydraulic bearing" or thereabouts, the solution might be a new fan, because the insulation is gone. I've been reading up on them a bit. Then decouple it (if that's possible) and ye olde Armor All treatment.

On one side of my family, there's a farm that goes back at least 100 years, and they all have vehicles they trade in at 300,000 miles and that kind of thing. They instilled in me, on that on a farm far away from help, you're relying on glues, lubes, reduce vibration, watch the heat. Simple prevention saves a lot of grief. Seemed all the farm animals were in good psychological spirits too...

They would have loved Linux :-)

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2016 11:52PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

> I surely will try this on my NSA325v2 (my one and only active cooling plug) . I can't stand the fan noise, hence my preference for these small plugs and other passive cooling ARM boards!

NSA 325v2's main issue is that the back fan is mounted on metallic plate. Any fan makes it vibrate like a drum (I tried different fans too), while if you leave the fan free without the metal plate it's pretty quiet.

My solution was removing the back plate and keeping the fan "suspended" in place with rubbered metallic wire, uploading pic from my potato cam.

The metallic wire ensures that this high-vibration fan does not touch anything, so its noise drops down to a more reasonable level. The metal plate isn't critical for the box's integrity

In my nsa325v2 I still needed decent cooling because hard drives aren't of the NAS kind and turn red-hot without a fan. Heck, I even had to buy external enclosures with a fan for the other two that I keep as external drives.


I've done similar things countless times to fans in HP/Dell/whatever PCs, they love to use non-standard crappy fans that simply die or go "drill mode", I love to tear away that garbage and replace it with a decent fan kept in place with some metallic wire or strings or whatever.

To reduce vibrations you can also place some felt pads between the fan and objects it is in contact with.

It's not going to look very well, but hey, it will reduce noise.

Good info Bob! I'm always on the lookout for raw materials to be used as shock absorbers and what not.

There's another possibility - there's this elastic material they use for shock mounts around nice microphones, and I've got a sample here I've been meaning to go to a crafts store and see if they've got similar. But I don't know if tension needs to be at play in the first place, especially from 4 angles.

There's one item maybe we can agree to disagree, the stock fans. I looked up replacement fans and the specs looked okay, the noise and cubic feet per minute specs. Then I took a magnifying glass and took down the fine print numbers off my fan and searched those. Turned out the noise is lower, CFM higher and avaiable from a 100% status dealer in China. We'll see how that works out. Last fan made it 8 years.

I've got an HP DV6500 laptop (lacks screen but I run it out to monitor) that I love to the core but the fan runs way high especially with an HP BIOS flash they don't let you undo. So I'm not finished with my fanning.

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-