"warning: your cpu fan fail or speed too low"

[MistahMan]

Good day all,

I decided to open up my computer tower to clean it up with some compressed air and my vacuum cleaner yesterday and now when I turn my pc on on I get this message: "Warning: your cpu fan fail or speed too low. You can also disable this warning message in SETUP", after which the pc shuts down completely. It wasn't doing that before the clean up.

Any advice? Thanks.

[smurfy]

If you run it with the side of the case off, can you see if the fan is actually spinning?

A couple of possibilities I can think of:
1 - You have blown some dust into a position which is jamming the fan
2 - You have dislodged the fan connector to the motherboard

If 1, you may need to remove the CPU fan and give it a dedicated cleanout (this may require removing the entire heatsink assembly).
If 2, reconnect it

[MistahMan]

Thanks Smurfy. Gonna try those right now.

[MistahMan]

I opened the case again to check the CPU fan, cleaned it out a bit more and started the pc up again. Fan was spinning fine without any fan warnings at start up. Decided to close the case, not before turning off the pc. Started it again and the problem came back... Opened the case and the problem was gone.

That's when I realized, something must have been obstructing the fan when I closed the case. So this time I made sure to push all the loose wires out of the way, started it up and it's fine.

Womp womp....

[Ensign Tzap]

I hope you actually tied the wires up and out of the way.
Instead of just pushed up out of the way.

I've open up many a case too find a rats nest of wires just hanging loose.
Thus, before closing the case back up, I'd get those wires sorted and tied up and out of the way.

Not only does this stop the problem of wires sticking in to fans,
and pinching wires while closing the case, causing shorts.
But it helps the air flow through the case.

An ounce of prevention will go a long way.


Signed: Ensign Tzap

[MistahMan]

Good advice. Thanks man!