I have an Asus A7M266 motherboard. Jus recently, I started to hear a whine coming from the case. Naturally I assumed this to be the CPU fan, but after fitting a new one, the whine was still there. I have now discovered the whine to be caused by the chipset fan. I have loosened the two screws holding this fan in place and the whine has stopped. Does anyone know what could be causing this and have a better solution? Many Thanks in advance as usual

Northbridge fans are the pits. Either of these will work as a replacement, or if you have access to a used parts store an old 486 heatsink works also and can be had for a buck. http://www.nexfan.com/40mmfans1.html http://www.bestbyte.net/Product.cfm?ProductID=1058&CategoryID=6&Keyword=

Thanks for your suggestions. Being a bank holiday (UK) i was trying to solve the problem today. With what I have done, is this ok for now? or will the fan fall off? Its a bit rattly, but nothing like the whinning noise before.

You should be fine. Fans that are snug up against the chip or sink can cause whine from vibration and/or turbulence, and to introduce a small gap can eliminate the whine. You can fashion yourself some small rubber gaskets or use silicon like this guy did. http://www.overclockers.com/tips457/

I have been reading that I can just use a heatsink without a fan. The fan itself is held on a flat netal plate by two screws. If i was to buy a heatsink (mentioned above) (it has raised edges on it) My question is, will this be adequate and will it be easy to fit?

First you need to figure out what to do with that plate, which functions as a mini-heatsink. You have the choice of affixing the new heatsink directly onto it, or taking the plate off and then installing the new sink right on top of the nb chip. Check to see how well the plate is attached. If it is just on there with two sided tape, get rid of it. If it is glued on then don't mess with it. A little prying or twisting should tell you which way its attached. If it is screwed on just leave it. The point here is just that if there is tape under that plate then there is poor heat transfer between the plate and the chip. More likely there is thermal compound between it and the chip, which is fine. Your new sink doesn't really fit onto or into anything. It is just a flat bottomed hunk of metal (except maybe the very edges) Here is another one.. http://www.subzeropc.com/store/486hs.htm To install it you have two choices. Either you get some thermal adhesive and spread it thinly around on the sink bottom and then glue the sink into place, or you get thermal compound and spread it around 95% of the sink bottom and then use a couple drops of super glue on each of the sink bottom's corners and then glue the sink onto the plate. I attached my nb sink via the latter method since I don't have thermal adhesive laying around. Works fine. No matter what, you will need a pastelike thermal transfer agent coating the bottom of the sink, whether it be the adhesive kind or non-adhesive kind. You can buy either anywhere they sell heatsinks.