I'm trying to save my aging computer from imminent doom
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Since I was concerned about the video card getting too hot, I've been running the computer without the cover so I can keep an eye on it. I didn't have time to go to the hardware store for the screws, so I've been going on this way for a few weeks, and the Matrox cooling fan has been working fine for now (obviously however it can't be trusted and must be replaced). Two days ago I was very deeply disturbed to see that when I turned on the computer the CPU cooling fan did not start to spin and was making a loud noise
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Since the CPU fan is a pretty common (or so I thought) 12V 50mm type, I was very surprised that when I went to several local computer shops none of them had an appropriate fan in stock. One young clerk at one of the stores told me this was a "highly specialized type of item" and I had to restrain myself
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I did a little research online and found out that in three-wire cooling fans, the extra third wire is used to detect and monitor the RPM of the fan. In newer computers I guess the motherboard will control the RPM to maintain a constant temperature at the CPU, but I'm guessing that in my old computer it's probably only used to simply detect if the fan is in fact turning at all or has stopped/failed. However, I did not see any sort of error messages when either the video card fan or the CPU fan had their stoppage incidents
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Now that I'm aware of the purpose of all the wires on the three-wire fans, but have only two-wire fans with which to replace them, I'm not sure what to do especially since I feel urgently compelled to fix both fan problems immediately--sitting here listening to how sick they sound is highly unnerving--and I don't want to waste more time trying to find the correct (and presumably very rare) fans for my old computer unless it is absolutely-positively necessary. Does anyone have a suggestion about how I should proceed? My online research wasn't very informative about whether it would be safe to go ahead and replace the three-wire fans with two-wire versions since a few Google hits said to never attempt this but gave no specific reason why, while a few others said don't worry you'll just get some trivial error messages that can be ignored. I'm not sure which of these random search-engine results to trust, which is why I'm asking for the opinions of those I trust here at Posette Forever since in addition to being fine artists there seem to be many generally technically-minded folks here as well.
In looking at the other really old computers in my closet I saw that another one had a 12V 50mm fan that hooks up to the hard drive power supply plugs using a pass-through plug, so I guess another option I have on my table is to use this old fan for the CPU. However the computer that fan was in doesn't work and I no longer remember why it failed, so this second fan should be considered of questionable value although I guess I could cut and splice the connectors onto the first fan I want to use as a replacement for the CPU fan. This then would allow me to power the CPU fan directly off the general power supply instead of through the motherboard (as the Athlon system is currently configured to do). However, this is a bit of extra work and would cram even more jumbling wires into my already cramped computer case, plus would not solve the question of what to do about the video card fan and the three-wire/two-wire issue on that.
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Does anyone have any suggestions or have any experience with the operation of older PC cooling fans? I know I'm a cheapskate, and while there's no doubt I've gotten my money's worth out of this old computer I want to keep on stretching life out of it until the bitter end.
Thanks
Endosphere