Yesterday, my computer started to make an annoying whining noise. Knowing that this is likely a fan issue, I opened the case and proceeded to determine which fan was causing the issue. I got some compressed air and tried cleaning out the dust around it (and the rest of the computer while I was at it). This hasn't seemed to fix the issue.

Now, if it were just any fan, I would probably just replace the fan - they're relatively cheap after all. However, this is a special fan.

Aside: For what its worth, I feel bad that the graphics card blocks part of the fan, but it is the only slot the graphics card fits, so I had no choice.

After pulling out my motherboard user guide, it looks like this is a fan placed directly on top of the chipset. To be perfectly honest, I have no clue what the purpose of the chipset is - but it sounds important. After some quick research, I see that it is responsible for providing the bridge between my CPU, RAM and graphics, among other things.

Just a quick search at Newegg tells me that chipset fans can be purchased at pretty reasonable prices (< 20 dollars).

Is it practical to replace this fan? It is an old computer as computers go and I wouldn't be terribly upset to upgrade the motherboard and processor, so perhaps this is a sign.

Hardware Specs:

• Motherboard: Asus A8N-E
• Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra