EMERGENCY!

[Tycho Andersen]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, Steven Vollom wrote:

> In the motherboard User Guide, it shows a place next to the PCI slot for
> a fan, however on the board those pins are identified as CD.

Looks to me like there's both. The fan pins should be just above the CD
pins.

> two other places where there are pins for fans, they are identified as
> 'pwr_fan and cha_fan They are flush with eachother and each has only 3
> pins. The Heat Sink connector has places for 4 pins.

Those are standard 12V fan pins. It really shouldnt (at least, in older
models and cheap motherboards, I don't know about the newfangled fancy
ASUS ones ;-) matter which place you plug which fan into. If your
heatsink fan has four pins, clearly this isn't the place.

> I am concerned about plugging to the pins marked CD, even though they
> are 4 pin, because I don't know what damage I could do, if they weren't
> fan pins.

The pins labeled CD are for an out from your optical drive (if
you still have one). This used to be useful when controllers were very
slow, as it provided direct access to the onboard sound card, speeding
things up a bit. I'm not sure what will happen if you plug your fan into
this, but it won't be what you want.

> Other than those, if there are any other fan pins on the
> motherboard, I am too bleary-eyed to see them.  I am being so careful,
> it is giving me a headache.  Thanks! for the help!

A few questions (maybe you already answered these earlier, if so,
sorry):

1. Is the light labeled SB_PWR (standby power) on when there's power
applied to the motherboard?

2. Since the chipset fan requires a four pin connector and the one for
the CPU is already used up (I assume), if you're really worried about
it, some computer shops sell adapters for fans. For example, in my case,
there's not enough 3 pin connectors for case fans, so I have a splitter
which provides another 3 pin connecter. It connects to the big 4 pin
power connector for my optical drive. This way, you can make sure the
chipset fan is on as well.

Some motherboards will check to make sure all of the fans are connected
and running before booting up, and won't boot if the fans aren't
connected properly (I think mine does this). Take a closer look at your
motherboard manual to see if yours is the same way. If that's the case,
you'll probably need to investigate how to hook up the fans so that the
motherboard is happy. This can sometimes be a pain, but ASUS boards are
generally documented well.

HTH,
Tycho