PC diddlings

[kingandy]

Having returned to Ilkley, I have the opportunity to investigate my strangely nonfunctional PC here. (To reiterate: the lights on the keyboard do dance in manner most unbecoming, and the screen it does remain blank.) Upon opening the case and experimentally activating, a likely cause becomes apparent: Processor fan no worky. There's clearly power going in - the fan on the graphics card buzzes merrily, as well as the aforementioned keyboard seizure - but there is no motion from the processor cooling unit until the power is switched off, at which time it jerks fanwise but once. To my A-Level Physics educated eye it has the look of a busted electric motor. Perhaps it is the alternator.

So the questions now are ... (a) Which bits of my PC will require replacement, and (2) how much can this reasonably expect to cost? I myself am quite unsure what knock-on effects this fan malfunction will have accrued; I suspect the processor will have performed a HACF^[1] but do not know what else this may have affected. As far as cost goes note that I'm not looking for bleeding edge, or even anywhere particularly on the knife; the current processor is 400MHz. It is required only to talk to the interwebs and back again. Stretford houses my game machine (lovingly constructed by pkgem's SO).

I strongly suspect this will be something I will be putting off until I am once again gainfully employed. But I'm still curious...

[1] Halt And Catch Fire. Mythical processor command from the early days of computing, computer nerd shorthand for entering an infinite loop calculation the heat of which eventually causes the processor to melt. Would be commonplace in modern PCs without the aid of the cooling unit.

Comments

[masinkie.livejournal.com]

The fan on my previous computer died once, I replaced the fan and everything worked fine.

At a 400mhz, especially if it's a pentium (they run cooler), I'd risk just buying a new fan and replacing the borken one.

If that doesn't work, you can always check Ebay for a direct replacement. Which would probably be around $20, even with shipping to yurp, it shouldn't be that much money (though quite a long wait).

[samharber.livejournal.com]

At the bare minimum a new heatsink/fan is required, but probably the processor as well needs replacing.
the chances of getting a new one that will work with the motherboard are slim, but if you have a look on eBay for 400Mhz processors you may find something

[micolithe.livejournal.com]

If you know the type of Socket that your processor/mobo have, it will be infinitely easier to replace. I have no idea how to tell what the socket type is unless it says it on the newegg item list, however

[kingandy]

Uh.

It is the old flavour.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

HACF isn't mythical, its just it didn't have the op-code. Anyway I digress.

If your lucky the processor will of thermally shutdown before it could over heat. The easiet way to test is to put a new fan on (for a few quid) and see if the board powers up. You didn't happen to keep the manual for the motherboard did you?

[kingandy]

I think I was pretty specific there - the command itself is mythical, the behaviour isn't. ;p

I may have the manual ... I have several lying around. The trick is matching them up ...

[blufive.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Intel processors are very good at doing the "oops-no-heat-sink-must-shut-down-before-I-fry" routine, while AMD ones are better at just frying.

On the other hand, since it's only the fan that's busted, you still have the actual radiator-fins bit of the heat sink. On a 400MHz processor, that might have been enough to keep it alive.

As everyone has pointed out, heat sinks/fans are only a few quid, so that's an easy way to test.

[kingandy]

Ah. It is an AMD...