Processor or Fan; Chicken or Egg.

[freeborn]

Howdy all!

I've been running an Intel D50EMV2 for awhile but upgraded to newer board on my primary rig. The old board I handed down to my little brother (19 going into Sophomore year in college) but upgraded the processor to a 3.06GHz / 533MHz FSB processor using the fan which came with the Retail boxed processor. It was pretty loud though.

For his birthday last week I bought him the MCX4000 heatsink/fan combo from Monarch Computer and installed it the day before yesterday. I run this same heatsink / fan combo on the motherboard when I used it but moved the old heatsink / fan to my new motherboard when I upgraded. The first heatsink / fan is still running fine on my new P4 3.0 / 800 MHz FSB system.

After the upgrade my brothers computer was definately quieter and seemed to be running fine. We had played a LAN game of Dungeon Siege for several hours and then left for dinner at our other brother's house. Returning five hours later, the 850EMV2 system had a high pitched squeel coming from the speakers and the desktop was frozen with a static image left on the screen. On inspection, the processor and motherboard were gone. I tried the processor in a simmilar system at work but could not get it to post. The motherboard has the trace leading to the central pin of the fan header burnt to a crisp. The thermal paste on the processor was not discolored but had apparently hardened some.

Possible points of damage:

The tools used to affix the heatsink retaining studs scratching a trace?

Removing / Replacing the motherboard?

Bad fan. Ran for a day and a half before damage occured?

Power Supply? It has an Enermax whisper quiet 330W I think, not sure of the wattage but I know its an Enermax whisper model.

I now have a dead processor, dead motherboard, and indeterminate system RAM. In all of your experience, what was the likely failure point and what was the symptom?

I will be contacting the vendors tomorrow. Processer was a retail box unit with 1 year warranty. Motherboard was also a retail box unit. Both of these came from Newegg although several months apart. The heatsink & fan came from Monarch computer but their twin has been running fine for almost 2 years.

I do not know if the fan is at fault, when I apply power to it it spins but I do not know how much current it is drawing.

What do you all think? Did the fan fail, allowing the processor to overheat and fry the motherboard. Did the processor fail, taking out the motherboard? Did the motherboard fail taking out the processor?

Has anyone seen something simmilar before?

Thanks for any insight,

Free

 

[CityK]

Free,

If you got this combo then you may want to take a look at this thread. I have heard of problems with those fans before, and googling gave me that thread as one of the first hits ... some of the stories sound pretty plausible.

CK

 

[flagreen]

The P4 has thermal throttling so it had to be the fan. Sounds like it drew more current than the board could handle.

 

[freeborn]

Free,

If you got this combo then you may want to take a look at this thread. I have heard of problems with those fans before, and googling gave me that thread as one of the first hits ... some of the stories sound pretty plausible.

CK

I do indeed have that combo, guess I won the lottery. Question is did I win it the first time, or the second?

I hope Intel honors their warranty on the board and processor. I'll ask Monarch for a replacement fan and the adapter to power the fan off of a separate 12 volt feed while retaining motherboard monitoring.

Free

 

[blakerwry]

Yust FYI, the central pin on a 3 pin fan header is 12V.

 

[CougTek]

The P4 has thermal throttling so it had to be the fan. Sounds like it drew more current than the board could handle.

Good guess here. However, unless the Intel motherboard is quite cheaply made, it should be able to feed a TMD fan. Most motherboards can supply at least 3W to the system/CPU fans per header. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think the TMD fan can blow up past 3W of power...unless maybe Freeborn's fan had a short and behave like in the horror stories about that kind of fan.

It might be a combo of both : the fan had a short and started to spin off too quickly, therefore drawing more juice through the fan header than what the motherboard can supply.

We should write the next Sherlock Holmes book.

 

[blakerwry]

if the fan had got something stuck in it (stopped spinning) could that have caused more current draw and caused the problem?

I know it's easy for power cables or zip ties or whatever to get in the way of a fan.

 

[jtr1962]

if the fan had got something stuck in it (stopped spinning) could that have caused more current draw and caused the problem?

I know it's easy for power cables or zip ties or whatever to get in the way of a fan.

Short term, no. Long term, maybe but not likely. Brushless fans use mosfets to power the various motor windings in sequence. When the motor is spinning the back EMF increases the resistance of the windings, limiting current to a safe value. If the fan stops spinning the winding resistance is less, and hence more current flows. Not enough to blow the trace right away, but if the winding overheats eventually the insulation breaks down and the winding shorts. At that point current flow is limited by the mosfet's on resistance. If the current exceeds the mosfet's limits it will eventually fail. One failure mode is a near short across the mosfet between the drain and source. If this happens you easily have enough current to blow the trace. However, most fans have some protection from catestrophic shorting and some even cut the power if the windings get too hot, which is why I said this failure mode was possible but not likely.

 

[freeborn]

So far, I've contacted Intel, had to authorize a $25 dollar mother board incident fee, and then spoke to a technician who reversed the fee and issued an RMA for the board. I was given a case # for the processor and transfered. 12 minutes on ignore and I had to hang up to come in to work. I got back in their processor support queue when I got here and they've just hung up on me after 5 minutes in the queue. Monarch has not replied yet to my RMA request. I'll see what happens on my next call to Intel.

Free

 

[freeborn]

Don't know if anyone is interested but I've got RMAs issued for the board and the processor so I'll be shipping them back on my dime tomorrow and hopefully see the replacements in the next week or two. Monarch hasn't replied to my RMA request but I had some time today and cracked open the fan.

As it turns out the 12V power wire was held on to the control board by a prayer and had come loose, grounding the wire to the fan chassis. I don't know how it was spinning when I applied power after the failure but it should not have been. I soldered it back in place and checked to be sure I did not have continuity between the 12 volt line and the chassis. I also checked the windings and apparently TMD read the thread I was linked to above. This fan has a fiber base and what appears to be Mylar pads above each coil at the corners insuring that the coils don't short. Too bad they didn't inspect the solder connections on the control board. Anyway I'll be testing the fan at my desk at work for a couple days running it on a current limiting Sorenson DC supply to see if I truely fixed it. I'll connect the 12V and ground wire and ground the heat sink itself. At least I can see how much current its drawing and if it will run for several days nonstop.

Free

 

[The JoJo]

Keep us posted on how it goes, it's always good to hear others experiences about RMAing stuff and the problems they have with products.

Hope everything goes well!

 

[freeborn]

I'll keep you all posted. So far the fan's been running 24 hours on my desk. On startup it pulls about 0.85 amp and then settles down to a constant 0.25 amp. The board and processer are on their way to Intel's defective receiving in Louisville, Kentucky and should be there on Monday. Hopefully they ship the new ones back to me quickly.

Free

 

[freeborn]

Howdy all, the final pieces made it back today. The fan ran non-stop over the weekend until I brought it back home Tuesday. We put the system together and its running fine now. The fan is powered off a drive power connector now with the tachometer lead going back to the motherboard. Hopefully it will keep working fine for my brother.

Free

 

[blakerwry]

what's the total damage?

 

[freeborn]

Blakerwry,
If you mean monetary damage, ~ $60 for 3 day select shipping of the motherboard and processor with full insurance. If you mean time, I spent a several hours tearing down the system, determining the motherboard was burnt, and testing the processor in another system at work. I spent more time talking to Intel's tech support folks who just happened to be going through a phone upgrade and losing calls as a result. Then with Monarch computer silent on my RMA request I took a look at the fan and spent about an hour opening it up, soldering, and then setting it to run on my desk at work while everything else was shipping back and forth.

My brother missed out on a little over a week of computing time with his rig but was able to use a bit older one for most things.

Free

 

[blakerwry]

do you feel that the places you ordered from and products manufacturer's did a good job with customer service?


I would personally be upset over $60 on a new rig... that's probably about 10% of the cost of a complete new box. All because of a poorly made fan...

I was disapointed with mwave.. I ordered a PCU/mobo bundle to save a few dollars... I paid the extra $10 to have them assemble and test the rig (it was an extra and not required)


To my dismay, they assembled the board, CPU, and HSF and then put that into the original motherboard box.. shut the lid and musht have jumped on the box to get it to shut because it obviously did not fit.

I received the box and there was clear damage to the box from trying to make things fit (the solder on the back of the board that is a little bit sharp made deep indentions through the foam inot the mobo box). I tried to run the thing anyway only to find that it wouldn't post and the CPU had been cracked....

so not only had I paid extra for suposed q/a, they had ruined my items in the process...my only option was to keep the cracked CPU and write it off (about $175 at that time) or to pay for shipping of the HSF and CPU back to them so they could send me new ones. why they needed the HSF, I will never know.

All in all, i was without computer for about 1 week longer (old mobo died).. spent a needless $20 .. and spent several hours of my time.

I also had a big hassle with mwave and some HDDs (they broke 3 $100+ WD special edition drives) later on... I have become convinced that they have the worst shipping department in history and I never order anything that is fragile from them anymore... newegg.com gets all my business.

The only time I order from wmave now is when no one else has it in stock and I am sufficiently sure that the item can't be crushed by human hands.