i noticed after i built my machine some months ago that after a week or so of operation the chip fan on the mobo (asus a8n sli deluxe) started making a loudish buzzing every now and then. that seemed to go, but now everytime i turn it on it makes this god awful grinding noise for about a minute then shuts up.

i read up on it and it would appear its a common fault with the a8n sli boards that the chip fan is crap. anyway, i'm going to replace it, but i'd just like some recomendations (perhaps from someone who has had the same trouble) as to exactly what I should replace it with, as i know the longer video cards can be obstructed by anything bigger than the original chip fan.

thanks

If this is a relatively new board, don't do a thing until you contact ASUS support & explain your problem. They are an excellent company to deal with & I'd be willing to bet they'd offer to either replace the fan or possibly the entire board.

Here's something I wrote about 8 months ago:

http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/33113.html

ASUS A7N8X-X
Athlon XP 1800+
8.5 x 200MHz
1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7
Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro SP2

Well the board is still in warrenty. Thing is though, I do have the fan set to warn me when it conks out, but I have two big problems. Firstly, unlike the cpu fan and chassis fan, you can't set the chip fan warning to temprature or rpm, it's just 'on or off'. so i don't know what the conditions are as to when it'll warn me... I presume when the thing just grounds to a hault.

Not only that but I've been leaving the system on for long periods of time unattended.

That could be dodgey. I don't want the board to fry. And seeing as I sleep like a log I'm unlikely to hear any warnings.

Do you think if I called ASUS up now and told them I think it's dying, that they'd do something about it? Or would they want to wait until it completely dies before they did anything?

If you haven't already done so, the 1st thing you should do is register with ASUS support. Once you've done that, you can contact them & explain your concerns about the fan. If nothing else, you'll at least start a cyber "paper trail" to document your problem...they'll keep a record of all tech questions & then you can refer to them by number in the future.

http://support.asus.com/

ASUS A7N8X-X
Athlon XP 1800+
8.5 x 200MHz
1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7
Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro SP2