Thermaltake Volcano CPU Fan and my work-around
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educated opinions....
Here's what happened -
I shut off my PC for the first time in months and months the other day to
accommodate some furniture re-arrangements.
The machine was off all night. The next morning, I reconnected things, and
turned it on. Everything came up just fine, I checked my email, then left
the computer and went about putting furniture pieces back in their
places.... After a few moments, I noticed an odor, like hot dust... which
slowly turned into a stinky plasticy smell....
As the only thing powered up, was my computer, I checked things out (using
PC Alert: temp, cpu fan RPMs, etc.) and things looked ok. But that stinky
smell never means anything good when electronics are involved, so I shut
things down, and took off my chassis cover to inspect the innards of the PC.
No loose wires, no melted plastic, nothing. Just that (by now) pungent
stink.
With the cover off, I turned on the machine and watched the PSU, GPU, and
CPU fans all spin up. Windows XP booted fine again, but after a moment or
so, I noticed the Thermaltake Volcano 7+ fan slow, then stop, then just sort
of twitter. PC Alert kicked in, and reported the CPU fan RPMs at 0, and
sounded the audio alarm. (Nice to know that the software and sensor actually
works! - Although it sounded like a car alarm, and had I not been right at
my PC, I would have thought it was just that, and probably not been worried
that my CPU was at risk of frying. I think I am gonna change the wave file
that plays... -FYI)
Needless to say, a lot of cussing, and troubleshooting ensued...
Here is my 'solution' to get things going without replacing any hardware
(yet):
There were two leads from the Thermaltake 1) has just the sensor wire, and
was plugged into a 3-pinned JP site on my motherboard, 2) had just 12+ volt
and 1 ground (in a 3-holed housing), and adapted to one of the many power
supply leads (I tried moving it around to several different leads, but the
fan would always shut off after a few moments).
Then, with the computer on, I simply unplugged the power lead to the fan,
and plugged it back in... the fan would work for 10 or 15 seconds then stop
and twitter.... unplug then plug back in... start, stop, and twitter...
consistently.
I carefully read my manual, and cruised MSI's site for any info regarding
the (thankfully) redundant option of connecting the CPU fan directly to the
motherboard, and found no indication that there were any issues with doing
this. I cruised Thermaltake's website and found it to frustratingly bereft
of any decent troubleshooting steps, or signs and symptoms of problems. It
was no help whatsoever.
So, going with the notion that there was something screwy with the what
controls output to the power supply leads for internal devices, I carefully
removed the single sensor wire from its housing, and inserted it into the
empty one on the 2-wire fan-power housing, then plugged it into the CPU fan
JP site on the motherboard.
It worked! Great! I have been putting the machine through its paces for
the last couple of days without ANY failures: Unreal Tournament, Unreal II,
Nvidia Earthviewer, Sisoft Benchmarks, and FutureMark's Benchmark. All with
smooth sailing.
I am supposing that I should consider replacing my power supply....
[it is ample on paper, but it is supporting the following:]
AMD 1700+ OCed to 1900+
MSI Motherboard (ms-6380)
1 Gig DDR RAM
2 Hard drives
DVD Drive
CD-RW Drive
A seldom used floppy drive
Win TV Card
Geforce MX 440
NIC card for DSL
56k Fax/Modem
6 USB ports of which I use 3
2 9-pin serial ports of which I use one
1 game port of which I use one for MIDI
In general, it has been my experience that the Power Supply is more
susceptible to damage than internal components, as it is on the 'front line'
because it is connected to the power source. Of course, that is assuming
that you have cooling, and a decent case, and stable hardware inside to
begin with.
Sorry for a long-winded post.... But I am curious what others think about
my situation. The only times I have ever had problems with computers of
this magnitude, it has been when I turned them on from a cold state- not
while they are already running... that's the main reason I keep mine on all
the time. You typically only see lightbulbs blow when you turn them on,
too.... very rarely will one fail after being on for hours.... cold metal
wire infused with structure-buckling electrons..... and that's when
something with no moving parts can break.
Thanks in advance for ideas, warnings, and suggestions.
-Lawrence
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