PC Died - Northbridge Fan stopped

vicadd

My PC Died while my son was in the middle of playing a game, he's only six, so I don't know exactly what happened.
Anyway symptoms now are that when I power on the PC, I get no Beeps, nothing on the monitor, but drives spin up. It's an Abit NF7S motherboard with award bios. I would have expected some beep codes if problem was CPU, Graphics or memory. I've just opened the case and notice that the motherboard power light comes on, CPU fan turns,
but the NorthBridge Fan does not start.
Does anyone know if this is likely to be the cause of failure - if this fan failed, could the northbridge have overheated and blown...hence I need a new motherboard?
Unfortunately I need to go out so cannot investigate further now, but would appreciate any advice/experience before I look at this in the morning.
Thanks,
Dave.

BadCharlie

Have same motherboard and i think its strange that everything starts up and you get the lights on the motherboard but then no beeping. You might be lucky and get it working again.Good Luck.

DonkeyStyle \o/

I've got my NB fan unplugged all the time, on both of my PCs... for over a year each.
I've never experienced instability over it either (both machines are overclocked)... I'm starting to think they're a marketing gimmick.
"Our motherboard is so fast; it needs its own fan!! Wow!!!"

Maybe your frozen NB fan is more a symptom than a cause?

mp3guy

no beeps means dead cpu AFAIK

jc94062

I have to agree with mp3guy...

Northbridge fans arn't required, I just run a heatsink and the only reason a northbridge fan would cause death with be from overheating, and it ain't gonna overheat as soon as it goes on :-(

Sounds like something got fried so only parts of the mobo are working, some parts (like the nb fan) arn't getting power so nothing happens, no idea what could have caused it except excess heat though, there weren't any power surges or anything were there?

BadCharlie

Might be just bad luck and cpu failed.

vicadd

Tried the CPU in another computer and it's working fine. I reckon it must be the motherboard....so I've just bought a new one and will have to rebuild later.

vicadd

Well this has turned out to be the graphics card. That'll teach me to test every component first before going out to buy new parts.
I got the card last September, so going to see if I can get it replaced. In the meantime has anyone got a spare graphics card? I'll stick a post in the Wanted section for something to keep me going for a week or two.

BadCharlie

At least you solved the problem.