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Weird fan problems and trying to understand CPUID

Semi-Lobster

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Recently I've been having a strange problem where the fan on my Scythe Shuriken keeps starting and stopping, starting and stopping and its getting really annoying! (for obvious reasons). The HSF is connected to the 4pin CPU fan connector on my motherboard through an Arctic Cooling 4pin CPU fan. I tried checking XPUID HW Monitor but to be honest with you, I'm not too familiar with the program so I'm not sure what's its trying to tell me when it says 'TEST'. I'm 99% sure that FANIN2 is my CPU fan but like I said, I'm not sure what this means. Any help would be appreciated.

 

DirectorC

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It sounds like you have a little program that is running in the background that uses a good bit of CPU time. Could be a virus or just something you've recently installed or initiated.

Keep Task Manager open and look at the CPU usage, it should tell you something.

I'm not aware of PWM control just magically ceasing to function properly on any system.
 

Semi-Lobster

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Ok things are getting weird now my CPU fan is chugging along at a healthy 1144RPM and isn't starting and stopping anymore... very.... strange. I wonder what caused that to happen?
 

DirectorC

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A program or service in your system was doing something CPU-intensive. It's the only explanation.
 
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Is your cpu fan set to PWM in bios?? If so, it could simply be stopping/starting with the cpu temp fluctuating. Turn it off in bios and see if things change, if it does help you can set the fan control to voltage rather than pwm.. it won't stop the fan just slow it down.
 

Semi-Lobster

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Is your cpu fan set to PWM in bios?? If so, it could simply be stopping/starting with the cpu temp fluctuating. Turn it off in bios and see if things change, if it does help you can set the fan control to voltage rather than pwm.. it won't stop the fan just slow it down.

Actually thats the first thing I tried but to my surprise, my Asus M3A78-T doesn't seem to offer any sort of PWN fan options in the BIOS :confused:
 

Semi-Lobster

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My fan has dipped to 372RPM, yet I cant seem to do anything to set the fan through BIOS?!?! This is an extremely bizarre and frustrating experience so far....
 

DirectorC

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Yeah that's odd. I'd check into the actual working status of the fan itself rather than anything else. Fan could be dying.
 

Semi-Lobster

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Yeah that's odd. I'd check into the actual working status of the fan itself rather than anything else. Fan could be dying.

Indeed, all this is pointing to a hardware problem but I'm beginning to think that another fan is a culprit of this. You see, since I only have one PWM fan on my motherboard, my CPU fan is infact connected to it THROUGH an Arctic Cooling fan, there seems to be the possibility that my Arctic Cooling fan is simply sucking more power leaving less for my CPU fan. Tomorrow I'll try to see what happens when JUST the CPU fan is plugged in. This is odd though, I've had my fans set up like this for months and never had any trouble until now.
 
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Good day bro! I too think that your two fans sharing the same connection is the problem. Try running just the cpu fans first without the Arctic cooling fan and see if it fixes the problem. And I just wanna ask what kind of power supply unit you have cause your voltage readings for the 12v and Vcore are kinda low so Im thinking that your PSU is not supplying enough current for your system. But thats just my opinion but you might as well check it too!:D Best of luck!
 
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Semi-Lobster

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Good day bro! I too think that your two fans sharing the same connection is the problem. Try running just the cpu fans first without the Arctic cooling fan and see if it fixes the problem. And I just wanna ask what kind of power supply unit you have cause your voltage readings for the 12v and Vcore are kinda low so Im thinking that your PSU is not supplying enough current for your system. But thats just my opinion but you might as well check it too!:D Best of luck!

Thanks, today I'm going to buy a regular Scythe 3pin Molex case fan to replace the PWN Arctic Cooling one, hopefully that will fix it. As for my PSU, its an OCZ StealthXStream 600w PSU, it should be supplying enough power? I generally don't touch my voltages because... I'm really not all that good at that sort of stuff but do you think I should?
 
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Thanks, today I'm going to buy a regular Scythe 3pin Molex case fan to replace the PWN Arctic Cooling one, hopefully that will fix it. As for my PSU, its an OCZ StealthXStream 600w PSU, it should be supplying enough power? I generally don't touch my voltages because... I'm really not all that good at that sort of stuff but do you think I should?

Nice to know that your gonna buy that 3 pin molex case fan! That way the cpu fan wont have to share connections and hopefully solves your problem! Well you have good PSU there! Just check the HWMonitor reading again after installing your new fan and post it up again here! You have a good one!:D
 

Semi-Lobster

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Ok I bought a new fan and for a little while things 'seemed' ok now that the CPU fan was plugged directly into the 4 pin PWN slot on my motherboard. The fans starts off around 2000 RPM and keeps things nice and cool but after watching Speedfan I noticed that the RPM fluctuated for no reason, it would drop to only 100 RPM and then suddenly jump to 1500 RPM when I'm playing games and then change to a bunch of others numbers for no logical 'automatic' reason (under an intense load, sudden light use etc.). I'm beginning to think that maybe there's something wrong with my motherboard itself?

Just right now actually my fan for a few seconds dropped to zero! So I can safely assume something is wrong
 
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Semi-Lobster

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I think I found out the problem. According to a friend of mine, the (original) Scythe Shuriken is sort of notorious for having a defective fan and that the fan is pretty much dead which means either:

A) buy a new fan
B) replace the entire HSF

I would prefer to just replace the fan with (Scythe seems to be the only ones who sell 100mm fans) but I've never done that on a heatsink before? Is it difficult? Or is it just a matter of screwing and unscrewing things?
 
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Good day! Well its nice to know that you got a new fan but kinda sad that you found another problem! if those shuriken fan of yours are defective then its really time to replace them too! Its not that hard to replace a cpu fan and im quite sure that you can do it by yourself! but before you do that, can you please post another screenshot of HWMonitor and CPU-Z running at the same time?
 
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