After installing a new AM3 motherboard everything was going well until it unexpectedly shut down, after trying to reboot i got the error message telling me that the CPU fan had an error, obviously i could tell that the fan is spinning so what could the problem be? While i wait for your advice I'm reapplying thermal paste and resetting the cooler in an attempt that this will help. Thanks for the help, Pyro
it now doesn't go into BIOS so i can't find out the temps! looking like RAM may be playing a part in this.
Ooo weird! Sounds like a classic case of knocking something whilst having a play. Sure everything is seated properly and all power leads are snug?
i had that problem once before...never did find the exact cause...but disconnecting EVERYTHING, and re-seating the cables made the problem dissapear...so i guess one of the wires wasnt making contact its possible that the pwn / fan speed wire isnt connecting, so the fan is getting plenty of power and spinning up, but the mobo cant detect it
Fan error is usually because the motherboard either can't sense the fan spinning, or because its spinning below the minimum threshold configured in the BIOS. My motherboard, for example, won't accept a fan RPM below 600 as "acceptable", as the top fan in my case spins at 600RPM at most (spec - more like 590RPM realistically) I get a POST error unless I disable monitoring of that fan in the BIOS. Same thing perhaps?
Yes, some motherboards will shutdown if CPU fan returns zero. Is it a PWM 4 pin fan or 3 pin fan? Some motherboards can have fan speed bugs. Gigabyte I had would report fan as disconnected sometimes until I rebooted. Had to disable the fan alarm in bios. It was a mobo bios bug because my brother had same mobo and he had same issue. Gigabyte never fixed that with a bios update. Bios updates came and went but they never fixed that bug. Obviously first thing to do is check the CPU temp. You should always have software installed under windows to show CPU temp. I use Speedfan utlity which also allows me to take control of all the fans automatically according to temperatures of various parts. I can also set speedfan to shutdown PC if something fails or overheats. It's bad practice not to know what your CPU temp is. If you determine that the CPU temp is normal then you can safely say the issue is a typical Gigabyte one of misreporting fan speed. You should be able to disable automatic shutdown in bios of the fan signal returns zero. Shutdown should be based on CPU temp more than fan speed especially with a buggy Giga board.
Sounds more like a part overheated and burned out. CPU I guess. If it was simply fan speed fault you could get into bios.
Have you tried taking the entire system out of the case and setting it up on the desk? When I got my Rampage III recently and installed it for the first time, my system wouldn't power up. Why? Because the back of the motherboard was shorting on the inside of the case. Definitely worth checking, as taking the motherboard out of the case is high on the list of troubleshooting priorities.
