help request with 200n replacement fan mystery

[MrConfused]

help request with 200n replacement fan mystery

[MrConfused]

Following advice given on a excellent thread in this forum, I replaced my 15x60x60mm exhaust fan with a 25x60x60mm version.

The result was that the 200n booted windows, then almost immediately crashed and rebooted - and kept on cycling like this.
The fan was spinning happily.

So leaving the 25x60 in place, I un-plugged it and plugged in the original 15x60.
The computer booted perfectly and kept on working.

So I bolted the original fan back in place.

Has anyone got any idea what is going on here?

The 25x60x60 is a Thermaltake TT-6025A 12V 0.22A

I used the fan socket inside the right cover by the fan.

I am running SpeedFan. I am not over-clocking.

Help!

Steve

[rrussell]

Madness.

I guess there's not a whole lot of other troubleshooting you can do on that one - what if you plug that fan into a different header, just for testing? The only thing I can think of is that  maybe there's a short in its wires.

Check the amperage on the old 15mm fan, too, though I can't imagine 0.22A is too much for the motherboard. I have an 80mm plugged in, and it's cranking along happily.

What crash msg are you getting, if any?

[granolamonkey]

i too bet it is a short. i have yet to have anything like that happen and i must've tried 5 different fans in my case hooked up to different headers. if you need to replace the fan, you could try a 60mm vantec stealth fan. i modded 80mm stealths into my case and i'm happy with them - both for noise reduction and air pushed.

[MrConfused]

Thanks folks.

I aim to find time tonight to:

a, test the fan current consumption

b, find the manual so I can locate another fan header.

c, cause world peace.

I may only have time for two of these.

Steve

[rrussell]

The easy test is the one right next to the CPU. That one shares the "speed" control with the rear fan header in Speedfan - that is, you set that one speed, and it controls both fan headers.

The other controllable one is next to the RAM and is slightly harder to get to w/out taking out the drive cage.

There's one that runs full-speed inside the front of the case on the...er.. left side, using your "right side" comment above as reference.

Good luck!

[MrConfused]

Thanks for your suggestions, I tried most of them.

Now, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that the new fan is installed and working.

The bad news is that I have no idea what was wrong with it before - despite going so far as dusting off my oscilloscope and probing things.

I am going to assume that I did something silly like plug it in offset by one pin or reversed when it wouldn't work - although this seems unlikely because, in my exerience, you have to push fairly hard to get a misaligned header to mate.

Now, my next self-imposed task it to get Speedfan to work on my machine as this new fan is noisier than the old one operating at the speed it is running at.

I am thinking of using the northbridge header to run the rear fan.
Is this a daft thing to do?

Incidentally, are there utilities available to run my CPU at 100% usage so I can test maximum temperatures?

thanks again,

Steve

[rrussell]

Hi, Steve -

Those kinds of problems, while nice to get fixed, always drive me nuts 'coz I don't know when they'll recur.  It was probly sunspots.

You can use any header to run any fan  Check other posts, though - the 200N's headers have a tendency to croak for unknown reasons. It's sort of odd, and definitely annoying.

Check "Prime95" at http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm - it's got a "torture test" mode that'll peg your cpu, boost heat and power consumption, and generally let you know if you've got things lined up nice. It makes a good memory test prog, too.

R

[granolamonkey]

here's another 2 cents - i just pm'd fobis on this.

i *thought* that 2/3 of my fan headers had croaked but they hadn't ... after a cmos clearing, a fresh install of xp and the new speedfan, the fans are back on the board! they're being controlled by speedfan 4.26 (yes, on the 200n).

So, not only has the 200n returned from the grave lately, it is like new again, lol!

[DrAtomic]

OMG!!! You got the fan headers working again? That's just plain WEIRD! You've given  me hope (although to be truthful, not a lot of it) that mine aren't fried. I wonder if just clearing the CMOS and purging of Speedfan would do the trick? I'm pretty reluctant to reinstall XP since it's running so well, fan headers aside. I have nightmares about having to go through endless driver mutations to get all the hardware working again after a freash install.
Getting fan headers that are tied to temperature working again would be a good thing, but until I find a way of quieting that jet turbine on the PSU I'm afraid my 200N will never be considered a "quiet" machine.

BTW, it's nice to see some action on this forum again, even if it is about resurecting the dead...

IDEQ 200N w/Mobile 2600+(Various OC's)
Twin Geil 512mb (1GB total) DDR3200 (2,3,3,11)
Maxtor 200GB SATA HDD
NEC 3500A combo drive, ATI AIW 9800 Pro

[MrConfused]

A few hours sorting and....

.... at 100% use  (using Prime95 - thanks rrusell) I get 55C and lots of noise.
I should try this test with the 15mm fan back in, but I may not have the heart

This is with:
the CPU fan into the JNFAN header
the case fan into its adjacent JCFAN1 header.

With SpeedFan 4.2x (whatever is the latest), I worked out some settings and both fans sit near minimum at light load.

I have temp2. which I judge to be the CPU controlling the CPU fan
and temp3, which I wildly guess to be some sort of motherboard sensor (it tracks temp 2 within +/-1C) controlling the case fan.

For the record, I have an 2800 Barton without overclocking and am using on-board video. Case fan has been swapped to a 25mm type. All else standard.

The PSU fan now dominates the noise at low load and set to 53C (how often have I read that before ;-) , so I judge all to be well.
I may try stuffing a sock into the PSU fan - or maybe flipping the PSU as I have seen suggested.
I assume the PSU can throttle its own fan, so maybe I should stuff ice rather than socks.
If I had know what a noisy machine the 200N was, I would never have bought one. The PSU also whistles like many other 200Ns do.
I bought it to use for my hobby, not as my hobby.
Maybe a nice little Shuttle Zen would have been better (edit: just read the Shuttle forum - Zens look pretty awful).

Other than that, much is good and the machine didn't hiccough during the 100% test.

One other thing:
A Steve-failing or a Speedfan issue is that, every time I shut down, Speedfan forgets its settings, so I am still doing something wrong.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Steve