top fan for microprocessor (question)

Hi, I recently was told that the fan on the processor is suposed to always be on. I did not know that, I was under the understanding that it only turned on when it got too hot. Anyway to remedy the problem since I don't want to burn out my processor, I went to the stor today to buy a new one.

I wrote down the modle number for the fan, but when I got there he said he did not need the modle number, he asked me what processor I had, I told him and he said I have a socket 7, which is corect I do have a socket 7, so he pulled out a fan and showed it to me, he said it will work with all socket 7.

It clips on diferntly, My old fan clips right onto the actual chip wheras this new fan clips onto the socket. I was reluctant to buy it at fist, so he took out an old mother board with a socket 7 and showed me, he did not clip it in but put it on top and showed me that the metal clips come down and atach to the socket.

When I got it home, I imediatly was egar to try it out, so I poped the lid, removed my old fan and tryed to snap it on, but i am not sure how i get the snap to go under the plastic thing on the side of the socket.

I was woundering if anyone has done this befor and can give me some advice. I would grately apriciate it.

The fan should have come with installation instructions which will direct you how to install it properly. If you do not have instructions with it, check the instructions that came with the processor, for they should have instructions how to install the fan as well. If you don't have either, check google for installation help (search for something along the lines of Socket 7 fan installation) and you should get what you need. Good luck!

AJ

The guy at the store is correct, a fan for socket 7 chip will work with any socket 7 type chip. If memory serves me correctly, I believe you have to take off the cooling coil on the chip, place the metal clip on the two notches on the side, should just lide down, then replace the cooling coil on the chip, and screw the fan on top. The connector should connect to the motherboard that has a small, very small 3 prong plug that reads fan1 or fan.

Not sure if this helps, but hopefully it will.

Fans are evil.... I must say, in my work, I hate jobs where there is a noisy CPU fan, because they are a bitch to replace.... It could just be my work, but most times, the fans we are told are correct are wrong... but... we've seen slot fans work on sockets... it kinda makes you go.. WtF????

Saddly, to the the thing to attach to the clip, you will typically have to torque on it. When these fans clip to the socket, they are ensuring they aren't moving at all by making that bracket tight as all hell on the socket. So if I under stand the question correctly, the answer is with a screw driver and elbow grease. Just be careful that when you are trying to fit it on the socket that you don't slip and screw the mobo by gorging the circuitry.

Hope this helps you understand what you need to do a little better.
Regards and good luck.

Thank you all for your help. I did a web search for

"socket 7 instalation"
and one for
"socket 7" "fan instalation"

that turned up some nice web sites, one had a animated gif demonstrating the instalation of both the chip and the fan. I am always searching the web for answers but for some reason this time it never ocured to me that there would be instalation instructions on the net.

My fan did not come with instructions. I am able to get the clips on now, but i took it off because I want to make sure it is the corect one first, so I found the web site for the manufacture and emailed them with my fan modle number. The reason i decided to take it back off was because when i got the one clip down and then layed it flat, it was shifted slightly off the chip. I think i should have layed it flat first then used the screw driver to clip it in.

I am amazed, for about 2 years my fan was not working.

Glad you finally got it on....now I'm gonna throw something else at you. You need to hit oyour local electronics store and buy a tube of thermal grease. This is placed between the bottom plate of the heat exchanger and the processor itself and is needed to ensure that heat is conducted away from your processor evenly. The thermal lube does this by filling in any gaps between the heat exchanger and the processor and acting as a heat conductor.

http://www.waterwheel.com/Guides/how_to/cpu/CPU.htm

Good link ac1dsp3ctrum.Afterall this is as easy and fully explained as you will get.I just want to add that you get some motherboards ,with all the pci ,agp and ram slots so cramped in that it is quite difficult sometimes to get the clips in.Make sure that they are properly seated. It could cause a lot of unwanted problems like (worst case cenario)damaging the circuitry like chefer has explained.
regards
v/man

Two years without a fan! Wow nowadays a AMDxp would'nt survive for more than 5 mins without one on, but yeah I have a socket 7 pc and its fan started to make strange noises, So I brought a fan with said it was powerful engoth to keep a 733mhz p3 cold, So now it works great, Glad you managed to get the fan on, but yeah allenb1963 right when he says a bit of paste would help out greatly.

this site has some pretty cool pictures of what happens when you don't have your fans running correctly :)

http://www.water-cooling.com/crapped.htm

there's also some really cool pictures of water cooled systems. anyone out there into watercooling?

I'd like to tack on a pretty obscure question that I was wondering about... For all you fan and case cooling gurus...

Is it better to have a fan taking air from outside, and blowing it down onto the processor, and then slightly-warmer air cools the motherboard, etc.

Or is it better to have the fan blow up away from the processor, sending that air directly out of the case?

I've been considering experimenting with adding a sort of ducting pipe inside a machine in order to let the CPU fan either pull air directly from a front (filtered) opening, or to have it run in reverse and exhaust directly out of the back of the computer through the same duct. (By 'duct' I mean a sort of sleeve (nonconductive)-over-slinky-like tube. Think your clothes-dryer and the round metal bendy-pipe and you get the idea.

-> the store I work at puts together 'ice boxes' where you have maybe for or five fans in the box and you can throw in a nice copper cpu heatsink/fan. If you like that, go with it, man, and get the full-blown cpu water cooling setup.

-> all kidding aside, your lucky to have made it like that for two years, imo, because I've lost more than one component to heat.

-> as far as whether the fans should pull warmer or cooler air over the system, I would guess that the manufacturers would recommend cooler air. increased heat=increased resistance in electronic components, and if you want billions of cycles in the processor you want as little resistance as possible on not just the chipsets but all the many traces all over the board. if you set up fans to work like you suggest (I assume you mean by swapping the power supply as an outlet [high on tower] with the case fan as an inlet [usually lower]), in an enclosed space, the effect would be degraded performance over time.

-> of course, laptops are very densely populated and they do alright in thermal dissipation. let us know how it comes out.