Bad fans may end in a dead system, got one on my bench

[BitMaster]

Maybe this is of interest for the DIY builders... and those who think cheap fans and cases may work in a gaming rig for teenagers that game daily for hours & hours.

Well, I built this rig over a year ago for one of my best friends but he picked the parts himself. Nothing bad, MSI board X570, 5600X, 16GB Gskill RAM of decent speed, Titanium PSU 1kW, his "old" 1080ti, a 1TB 870 Evo Samsung..nice...BUT THE CASE... cut corners I say, 39,90€ with 6 fans installed all LED. I mean, they looked nice and were rather quiet when new but now, say 18 month later 1 of them was hardly spinning and made a terrible noise, 2 more were kind of turning like a WWII prop with 1 blade shot off and the other 3 were kinda ok but got noisy, well, all ok so far, new fans and good to go.

No, GPU dead, Board dead, no beep and no signal. Tried the card in one of my systems,tried another good card in his system, rest Bios, M-flashed Bios, resetted a dozen times, not a single beep from the board alone. The GPU is dead, no question, the PSU is good, tested all with one of my PSU's and same results. Since I cant find any burn marks, smell or obvious hardware defects I began to realize that maybe the 3 broken fans, 1 totally blocked and buzzing, may have killed the board and took the GPU sadly with it. 

Need to test the CPU and see if that is still working, I now think it's well possible that this one of the rare incidents were it also takes the CPU down.

We will get a new B550 and 6750XT and rebuild it, whatever else is dead will be replaced.

I should add, the PC was ultra clean inside, not a sign of dust. It's not that dust killed the fans or such.

 

Whatever klilled it, it did a good job

[Tiger-II]

This is why my case has zero fans, and no side on it, either. Also, it is a large case, so lots of internal room for air to move from the only fans in there: the CPU and GPU coolers.

The dumbest thing ever in PC building is creating a monster of a heating rig, and putting it in a tiny closed box hoping a few fans will enable the heat to escape. Unless they are pushing cubes per minute (LMAO), they are just utterly pathetic.

Edited January 25, 2023 by Tiger-II

[LucShep]

14 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

This is why my case has zero fans, and no side on it, either. Also, it is a large case, so lots of internal room for air to move from the only fans in there: the CPU and GPU coolers.

The dumbest thing ever in PC building is creating a monster of a heating rig, and putting it in a tiny closed box hoping a few fans will enable the heat to escape. Unless they are pushing cubes per minute (LMAO), they are just utterly pathetic.

 

That is a wrong assumption.
All hardware is meant to run in at lower than 45ºC environment temp for long-term reliability. If pushing CPU, GPU, RAM and storage components, you can not ensure that in an enclosed case without fans, even with a spacious High-Tower case.

Unless you use an open-bench in mild temp room, or fit such a case in a freezing AC'ed closed room (like its done for servers), it's a pretty bad advice to tell other fellow users (likely missing experience) to not use cooling fans in a PC case. 
You need cooling fans in enclosed cases with modern mid to high end systems. The "few fans" with correct airflow, pulling in cold-air and pushing out hot-air, do work a treat.
What you really, really need to avoid is the el-cheapo bling-bling crap they try to sell you as if it's something nice to have (newsflash - it isn't).

Tight on a budget and need fans for your case?
Arctic P12 or P14, or Noiseblocker XL2, are great options.
Contrary to the impossible rule, they're very cheap, reliable and effective.

Edited January 26, 2023 by LucShep

[BitMaster]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb Tiger-II:

This is why my case has zero fans, and no side on it, either. Also, it is a large case, so lots of internal room for air to move from the only fans in there: the CPU and GPU coolers.

The dumbest thing ever in PC building is creating a monster of a heating rig, and putting it in a tiny closed box hoping a few fans will enable the heat to escape. Unless they are pushing cubes per minute (LMAO), they are just utterly pathetic.

 

A rather bad advice

[Mars Exulte]

20 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

This is why my case has zero fans, and no side on it, either. Also, it is a large case, so lots of internal room for air to move from the only fans in there: the CPU and GPU coolers.

 This completely disregards common sense and general thermal behaviors.

20 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

The dumbest thing ever in PC building

 Nope, you've pretty well eclipsed that.

20 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

is creating a monster of a heating rig, and putting it in a tiny closed box hoping a few fans will enable the heat to escape.

 That's what really inexperienced builders with really poorly designed cases are doing trying to cheap out. A properly designed case works by channeling the cool airflow across key components and out an exhaust. Just like countless other machines in use all across society.

20 hours ago, Tiger-II said:

Unless they are pushing cubes per minute (LMAO), they are just utterly pathetic.

  High volume fans will be 30-40 cubic feet per minute. Assuming an average of four or five fans, you'll be flowing literally all the air in the room through that case every few minutes, which is going to be way more heat exchange than your ''leave the side off and hope for the best'' approach.

 It's really easy to test. Do a benchmark stress test or something, note your highest temperatures and overall average, then put your case together in even a semi-intelligent arrangement (intake at front exhaust at back/top) and it is guaranteed to be considerably lower across the board unless you do something really backasswards. What you're doing also will not work if there are high ambient temperatures, because even the mediocre dissipation you're getting will be reduced.

 

 

Protip : If literally everyone does things a certain way, there's *probably* a reason that needs to be carefully considered. You didn't suddenly clue into some new concept nobody ever thought of before @@

[BitMaster]

LoL... got an update, lessons learned.

along with a new 6750XT and B550 board come six, now listen: Noctua fans.

let's hope the rest of the rig still works

the fans are 30€ each, that,s 180€.  I don't say you need to spent that much but I have seen weird stuff with cheap worn out & broken fans but this is tops them all loss wise, there, 180€ would have been a good investment first place and may well have saved the board and GPU

[corn322]

23 hours ago, BitMaster said:

maybe the 3 broken fans, 1 totally blocked and buzzing, may have killed the board and took the GPU sadly with it.

You sure nothing else happened to this computer? Electronics in the fan will fail in one of two ways: open circuit or short circuit.

If open circuit, the result will be if you unplugged the fan. Should not result in the board dying.

Short circuit, I can see whatever MOSFET driving the fan circuit dying, but these usually fail in an open circuit fashion. The rare chance it failed into a short circuit could take out other circuits. Any way to tell if the PSU was dumping straight into Over Current Protection?

 

23 hours ago, BitMaster said:

PC was ultra clean inside

He cleaned out what he spilled inside it?

[Mars Exulte]

3 hours ago, corn322 said:

You sure nothing else happened to this computer? He cleaned out what he spilled inside it?

  Yeah, tbh, let's side everything else aside and just take it at face value based on the overall condition of the fans described here... This person saw this themselves and just... ignored it until complete failure? This isn't a "fan issue", even if it started as one.

[BitMaster]

The reason may very well be careless kids that keep on gaming and putting stress on the machine while it squeeks and moans under your table, for hours, days and months.

That their dad didn't pay attention to the PC's health is another thing, the boys are teenagers and should know better without the need of their dad. I told them often enough

to look after that thing, LoL. I just don't live nearby anymore.

 

The circuits..well, I am no electronics guy and I honestly don't know if fans have the potential to ruin a rig but those were the only things with obvious, loud and visible damage

and experience from the past have showed me that broken fans have the potential to ruin the 230v house electrics to a point where your cable TV fails tuning into ceratin frequencies.

If I had not seen and fixed that myself at a neighbour and long term buddy I would not believe it, 1 fan ruins TV 1 floor downstairs but it did. So from that experience I thought, well have been the damn broken fans, not 1 but 3 of them.

We will see once the new parts are in.

Edited January 30, 2023 by BitMaster

[Dudikoff]

6 Noctua fans sounds like a huge overkill for a mid-range setup, IMHO. I would rather invest half of that price into a new brand name case which comes with 3 decent fans preinstalled.

E.g. I got myself a Lian Li O11 Mini Air for about 110 EUR and it comes with three large fans included. There are plenty of options at that price range with good design, materials, dust filters and decent and quiet fans.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Dudikoff

[Dragon1-1]

I find it doubtful that it was the fans that killed the PC, however persistent, repetitive overheating might have. Electric motors can cause voltage and current spikes due to their considerable induction and mechanical inertia of the rotor, and with a 230V AC fan I'd expect a big broken one could make a mess of an old-ish wall power circuit, but with PC fans they should not be powerful enough to do serious damage on their own. More likely, they simply failed and stopped turning like they should, and the computer routinely hit thermal throttling temperatures, the kids would complain about the computer "running slow", but likely wouldn't realize this could damage it. 

Edited January 27, 2023 by Dragon1-1

[Mars Exulte]

Plugging for EZDIY-FAB fans. I bought a whole bunch of them and have been super pleased with them. Good price (about $10 apiece) and I like the design.

EZDIY-FAB Moonlight 120mm RGB Case Fan with Fan Hub X and Remote,Motherboard Aura SYNC,Speed Control,Addressable Fan for PC Case-6 Pack https://a.co/d/3k4GOn6

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by Mars Exulte

[Dragon1-1]

Looks like a solid piece of kit, but out of stock at the moment. I don't like the idea of using a hub, anyway, especially not with a remote. My plan is to just chain the ARGB cables and control the lighting from my mobo's ARGB header, I have more than enough of them to do that and still have some room left for a LED strip.

[SkateZilla]

Sounds more like a bad power sin wave / frequency problem.

Bad fans wont kill a pc, there's too many failsafes on modern hardware, it wouldnt shutdown to save the hardware if temps were too high,

Gotta ask yourself, what caused all these fans to go bad so quickly, then eventually either the Mainboard VRM, the processor or the PSU Rails.

[BitMaster]

I am curious too,

maybe the fans where just so bad and failed early so that the whole rig overheated for a long period of time until that caused it's early death.

Still, it's strange..

[BitMaster]

LOL,

the new parts came and one of my fears turned out to be real, the new GPU is as long as the old case itself, top match.

 

I told my pal that there is serious doubt about the fans being the root cause, which I also believe more than the fan theory ( but it costs more to fix ! ), and that he better invests in

a new PSU of reputable brand, somewhere 750-850w.. He went with a 750w beQuiet Titanium that was on sale for 169€ and a larger case ( where we take 4 fans out to put his 6 new Noctuas in ).

Let's see if the CPU survived once we put it back, if not we have to replace that one as well.

The old PSU, we checked the specs and invoice, was an LC 1000w Titanium for 120€ back then. I told him, 1000w, Titanium and 120€...somebody is lying !Those 3 don't go together w/o

cutting corners. They cost at least twice that.

So, yeah, I then told him that we have been there before, about 4 years ago when he burnt through a 1.2kW cheap PSU while mining on his gaming rig. He then bought a better one that still runs today in his other son's gaming rig but now this LC low-tier PSU again.

In the end, if you want and need that thing running for whatever task, you spend more money & downtime with cheap parts, it has never payed out for as long as I build & fix PC's.

 

[SkateZilla]

$50 it was a split rail PSU and one of the rails went Poof.

[LucShep]

12 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

$50 it was a split rail PSU and one of the rails went Poof.

Certainly looks like a PSU related issue, not really something caused by fans (which is odd IMO).

[Thinder]

There are stuff you really can't go around and buy average quality, the PSU is one of them.

[BitMaster]

So, I have finished the repair and the CPU and SSD were both still fine.

Next up is to take the old PSU apart for recycle, maybe I can see something inside though I doubt there are visible signs of damage.

 

What the young gentleman did ( again ) forget was to tie his Win10/11 license to his MS account. PWD forgotten, a "I dunno..!" didnt help either so off to eBay and got another 10€ lic for 10Pro and upgraded it to 11.  Tie your lic to your MS account !! Otherwise you can buy a new lic with every major hardware change !