Dangers of going fanless?

[Starglider]

Motherboard fans are normally on the northbridge. If you allow that to overheat, you will get memory errors and random lockups before it eventually dies. If you have good case airflow it might not be a problem, but if you can I'd recommend pulling off the existing heatsink and gluing a bigger one on (I used to use a dab of thermal compound in the middle and superglue on the edges of the chip for that).

The graphics card probably isn't an issue, if you're not doing much gaming (and if it does lock up and crash in a game, no big loss). You could buy a 'silent' fan (you can get reasonable ones for $10) and attach it to the graphics card if you have issues.

[Stark]

Smaller fans are always louder; that's why my motherboard has no fans. PROTIP. Increasing the diameter of the fan makes it quieter.

You can get replacement motherboard chipset coolers (both fan and fanless), and video card fan replacements are easy. I find 90% of the noise in my box comes from the horrible C2D cooler on my CPU, but I just don't use it enough to be fucked replacing it with a giant radial fan of silence.

And then the HDD taps would just piss me off anyway.

[Vertigo1]

Install the temperature monitoring software that came with the motherboard and see what temps you get. As long as it doesn't show your MB temp 40C or above, it should be fine. That being said, if the fan is louder than normal, you might want to re-lubricate it with some 3-in-1 oil.

[Starglider]

but I just don't use it enough to be fucked replacing it with a giant radial fan of silence.

Or you could do what I do and use two giant fanless water cooling towers, one for each CPU.

And then the HDD taps would just piss me off anyway.

In my experience replacing the screws with anti-vibration rubber mounts is a cheap and effective solution to that. In an office environment anyway, for home cinema you might want one of those all-enclosing hard drive silencers.

[Stark]

People who use water cooling should be forced to go on a global ignore list.

The rubber mounts I've got quickly denatured in the AU climate and turned to shit. They didn't do much to reduce seek noise anyway, they just dampen the louder stuff (I'm pretty sure my oldish 500gb Seagate is hella loud).

[Oskuro]

Also, the older a fan gets, the louder it becomes. You could try getting new fans, as well as improving the heat-sinks.

Some people might also recommend opening the case, but I'm under the impression that doing so would fuck up the airflow and worsen things.

[Starglider]

People who use water cooling should be forced to go on a global ignore list.

Is this another of your utterly random prejudices or do you have a reason for this one?

In my experience water cooling is too much effort for poser 'hardcore gamers' with no actual technical knowledge, they just go for 13.8 million case LEDs and CPU coolers that consist of fourteen heatpipes embedded in a one kilo lump of roughly hewn copper. (with at least one LED fan glued to it of course).

[charlemagne]

Cleaning out the dust that piles up over the years on fans from could help a bit, too (I'm assuming you didn't try that because you didn't say so)

[Xon]

I refuse to buy motherboards with chipset fans, the damn things spin so fast they are noisy as hell and have a really bad tendancy to break and then your motherboard potentially starts cooking itself and corrupting data.

[Uraniun235]

The hardware is fairly old. It was all budget parts I got back in early 2005. I don't often do gaming (and when I do, the most graphically intense game is Perfect Dark in a emulator) and the most demanding program I run aside from that is my C++ compiler, which (being C++) sometimes runs for several hours.

In short, I'm not very demanding of the hardware. Should I be OK? If no, have any suggestions to silence those damn things when I turn them back on?

Well, it might not cook the hardware the first time you do it, but after several times there might be a cumulative effect.


I would recommend looking into attaching a big heatsink to your northbridge, and don't bother looking for an aftermarket cooler for your video card; just leave the fan unplugged, and if the card dies you can get a replacement one designed to be fanless which is probably faster than your current card for like $30 or something.

[Ariphaos]

Noisy fan + WD40 applied to bearings + ~day or so = no more noisy.

[Vertigo1]

Noisy fan + WD40 applied to bearings + ~day or so = no more noisy.

Oh HELL no. WD-40 is way too thin to be used as a lubricant in this case. Ideally you want to use teflon lube, but 3-in-1 will work as well. (same thing as sewing machine oil) Basically, you pull the motherboard, and then release the plastic retention clamps holding the heatsink on the board, then GENTLY twist it off of the PCB. DO NOT pull it off directly as you may damage the board. (This works best if you do it immediately after turning off the computer, as the thermal compound will still be semi-goopy instead of a solid mass.) Then remove the screws holding the fan in place, and turn the fan over. (Be very careful as it won't take much to strip out the hole the screw goes into.) Usually there will be a sticker "sealing" the bottom of the fan, or some kind of rubber stopper. Just pry this off with either a flat-head screwdriver, or an exacto-knife. Then put ONE drop of the 3-in-1 oil onto the center pin of the motor assembly. Manually rotate the fan blades until the movement is smooth, and then re-assemble everything. Thats it.

The reason why you don't want to use WD-40 is because not only is it very thin stuff, but the compressed air inside the can forces it EVERYWHERE in the fan assembly. This means that the next time you power the fan, oil is going to fly EVERYWHERE. Oil + electricity = not good for your components. (This same thing will happen if you use more than one drop of 3-in-1 oil.)

[Ariphaos]

Noisy fan + WD40 applied to bearings + ~day or so = no more noisy.

The reason why you don't want to use WD-40 is because not only is it very thin stuff, but the compressed air inside the can forces it EVERYWHERE in the fan assembly. This means that the next time you power the fan, oil is going to fly EVERYWHERE. Oil + electricity = not good for your components. (This same thing will happen if you use more than one drop of 3-in-1 oil.)

Huh.

Granted, I let it sit for quite some time, but I have not had this issue at all : /

[Zixinus]

But, how much of a risk do I run for damaging the stuff without those fans; what are the downsides I can expect from this?

My father is an electric engineer who worked with semi-conductors, mostly the older types.

A computer can work without cooling just fine, but expect a drastically decreased lifespan and possibly a BIOS-forced shutdown.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Noisy fan + WD40 applied to bearings + ~day or so = no more noisy.

The reason why you don't want to use WD-40 is because not only is it very thin stuff, but the compressed air inside the can forces it EVERYWHERE in the fan assembly. This means that the next time you power the fan, oil is going to fly EVERYWHERE. Oil + electricity = not good for your components. (This same thing will happen if you use more than one drop of 3-in-1 oil.)

Huh.

Granted, I let it sit for quite some time, but I have not had this issue at all : /

WD-40 is really only good at one thing, and that's being a water-displacing penetrating oil. Yes, you'll see improvement in the movement of the fan because the WD-40 has worked its way into the various bits of the mechanism and freed them up. However, once the volatile component has evaporated off, you're left with a somewhat sticky crud-attracting oil residue, which has the effect of accelerating the time between reapplications, if you're relying on it for lubricant.

You're much better off using a light machine oil. Something whose primary purpose is lubrication.

[Ariphaos]

WD-40 is really only good at one thing, and that's being a water-displacing penetrating oil. Yes, you'll see improvement in the movement of the fan because the WD-40 has worked its way into the various bits of the mechanism and freed them up. However, once the volatile component has evaporated off, you're left with a somewhat sticky crud-attracting oil residue, which has the effect of accelerating the time between reapplications, if you're relying on it for lubricant.

You're much better off using a light machine oil. Something whose primary purpose is lubrication.

Ah, that's a different argument, though I haven't had this issue either. I suspect that's because I rotate the fans, though.

[Vertigo1]

WD-40 also has a tendency to make muck out of dust bunnies, which is an incredibly ugly mess to clean up.

Remember, if it comes in an arisol can, don't rely on it for lubrication. Its best used to loosen parts that are seized from exposure, or lack of use over time.