Replace VC-RE fan on NF4?

[Kopfab]

My horrible nforce4 machine (DFI LP UT NF4 SLI-DR) died the other day. Among other things the Evercool VC-RE northbridge fan does not spin very much anymore - the very end of the yellow cable even is a charred black. Ideally I'd just buy another fan that fits. Sadly I can't buy another VC-RE in Germany. I can buy the VC-RF, which I know doesn't work that well on the NF4 - and I don't know if the fan is compatible. Or I can buy the VC-RI-B or possibly the VC-RI-R, but those claim to have a bigger fan and I don't know if they would fit on my mainboard.

There's also the passive options: Enzotech CNB-S1L (might not cool enough, not that cheap) and Thermalright HR-05-SLI (looks wacky, might not fit?).

The northbridge is (obviously) right below my two-slot GPU, so the VC-RE really has the maximum height that still fits.

Thanks for any help!

 

[RGone]

Evercool Where to Buy Link Shows Globe.

 

[Kopfab]

..the trick was that the Evercool VC-RE is sold here as the Coolink SWAP for some reason. Now, to see if that's the only thing stopping that old war horse from making a triumphant return..

 

[RGone]

..the trick was that the Evercool VC-RE is sold here as the Coolink SWAP for some reason. Now, to see if that's the only thing stopping that old war horse from making a triumphant return..

That is really not too surprising as I had a hard time just locating the Evercool website and then "most" of what is listed on there says 'old item". Glad you found it. The northbridge was a point at which the boards over time did finally fail. Hopefully that is not what is ailing your ole warhorse.

 

[Kopfab]

Well, if you want some details:
Computer froze (gpu output unchanged, no reaction to input). Restarted -> same problem again in shorter intervals. Same in BIOS. Replaced seemingly dead CMOS battery with half-dead CMOS battery, removed some RAM & tried various RAM slots, also unplugged all HDDs... finally noticed the northbridge fan wasn't spinning under my giant GPU. After cleaning it, it still occasionally spun for a moment or two before stopping again. On closer inspection the yellow fan power cable turned black near the end. Of course it might already have taken permanent damage from that ordeal, or there might be further mainboard/PSU problems in addition to the lack of a working fan.
And well, in general it's just the worst-possible setup you can do on a NF4. All RAM slots used, a heap of hard drives connected, RAID, a Creative X-Fi sound card... for example it only ever worked properly on XP & Vista, on Win7 I can't get reliable sound output without getting rid of the RAID setup. Of course that way owning a NF4 was a great learning experience for everybody who dared to push it a bit.

P.S.: The graphics card is a (dual-slot) 9600GT, and as far as I remember those were also supposed to fail over time due to some design mishap.

 

[Kopfab]

Ok, the fan wasn't even at fault. The mobo just sees very little reason to make the fan spin when it's connected to the NB fan port. It spins fine with the fan connected to anything else.
So wasted money on a new fan, problem persists. I can typically get into the BIOS and then it freezes up there after a minute or three; don't know if I should bother trying a different PSU or if I should just declare the motherboard dead and gone.

Disconnecting the X-Fi did not make a difference, for the record.

Edit: Did not work with the PSU from the PC in my sig, either. I'll just have to call it fried.

 

[mjw21a]

I look at things like this as an excuse to replace my mainboard and upgrade usually

Current AMD chipsets are MUCH nicer to work with the nVidia chipset boards. I had a nForce4 board in my HTPC which gave me no end of problems, swapped it out for a board running the 760G chipset, upped the IGP by 100MHz and works perfectly with HD movies etc..... Mind you, my Phenom 955BE is kind of overkill for this, I may undervolt it at some stage to save on power.

 

[Kopfab]

Yeah, I gave up on troubleshooting. I'm just buying a used computer from some guy I know online. Should do for 'PC #2' duties. [The alternatives to shelling out 200€ for a useful computer were paying 25€ for a ten years old one and like 1200€ for a brand new system.]
So far my computer graveyard is AMD-only - but this fourth entry might also be the last AMD. Oh well.
Two of the other AMD machines are still more or less functional for the record, their GPUs however died and they may require underclocking to run properly. The oldest one ('99) emitted magic smoke a bunch of years ago.