X570 Crosshair VIII Hero: Need Replacement VRM Fan

[ationfictons]

That silly little fan on the VRM/chipset heatsink of my Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (non-wifi) X570 motherboard has decided to start making grinding/scratching noises. I've removed the grill, blown out any dust (none) and jiggled it a bit to no avail. I need a replacement. Any ideas what to replace it with or where to get it? It would be nice if Noctua made a quality replacement, but I don't think they do.

[ationfictons]

No idea what that last picture is doing, above, with the spanish caption. But, I'm surprised the forum let me post all those pictures in the first place.

Anyway, there's a slew of fans answering to that model number on Amazon. They all look similar, but they tend to be in enclosures. I'm also not sure if the connector is the same. They seem to be in the $10 to $15 range. Now, I just have to guess which one might actually be the right one and isn't some kind of fake.

[criznittle]

ationfictons wrote:
No idea what that last picture is doing, above, with the spanish caption. But, I'm surprised the forum let me post all those pictures in the first place.

Anyway, there's a slew of fans answering to that model number on Amazon. They all look similar, but they tend to be in enclosures. I'm also not sure if the connector is the same. They seem to be in the $10 to $15 range. Now, I just have to guess which one might actually be the right one and isn't some kind of fake.

Thanks for the literal breakdown, this mini-ifixit will come in handy when all our chipset fans start dying. That said, this is one of the least consumer friendly fan replacements i've seen. Did Asus not foresee this fan failing, why make it needlessly complicated to disassemble and replace?

[ationfictons]

Yep. I just couldn't believe it when I started trying to get access to that fan. I figured a couple of screws right under the shroud and that would be it. I guess I can get my head around putting the fan below the graphics card: motherboard real estate is hard to come by. But why they made it so the motherboard had to come apart from the back to get access to it is beyond me.

[ationfictons]

I guess I'm SOL. As far as I can tell, the only sources of that particular fan (KSB0405HB-7JD <-- apparently, the 7JD is important) are either AliExpress or Ebay. The problem isn't the price (about$15 + a couple of dollars for shipping). It's 1) the sources are AliExpress or Ebay, and 2) they ship from China and will take a month or two to arrive.

Even if I check the Delta fan site, the only thing I find with the base model number is:

https://www.delta-fan.com/ksb0405hbf0d.html

and that fan's amperage rating is either 0.16A (spec sheet) or 0.30A (label) instead of this fan's 0.44A (label).

Searching on Amazon is entirely worthless (well, besides its normal worthlessness). Apparently, these fan manufacturers will use the same model numbers to refer to any darn fan they feel like on that particular day. Plus, every hit there is for an actual cooler (it looks like a laptop CPU cooler). If I dig through enough of those, I might be able to find one that uses this actual fan (7JD) and disassemble it. Perhaps it will work.

Unfortunately, I can't complain to the FTC. It looks like I can only complain about actual fraud there. And this isn't that. This is just basic right-to-repair stuff. And they don't care about that.

[xeromist]

So is there not room for an adhesive mini-sink or you're going to use that fan until it stops spinning?

[RedSector73]

OP did you get measure on the mounting holes in the X570 board for the chipset. I have been thinking that a low profile CPU cooler with the pump in the radiator, example Rosewill CPU Liquid Cooler also looked at the Antec’s H20 Kühler K120 or Corsair Hydro Series H60 V2 AIO or Corsair Hydro Series H45 might be a longer term replacement option... just a working thought not really dived into it any further, as my X570 chipset fan is still working.

[ationfictons]

RedSector73 wrote:
OP did you get measure on the mounting holes in the X570 board for the chipset. I have been thinking that a low profile CPU cooler with the pump in the radiator, example Rosewill CPU Liquid Cooler also looked at the Antec’s H20 Kühler K120 or Corsair Hydro Series H60 V2 AIO or Corsair Hydro Series H45 might be a longer term replacement option... just a working thought not really dived into it any further, as my X570 chipset fan is still working.

Good question. I'm not set up for real measurements, but I'll do my best. First, it looks like Asus thought of this and came up with a way to squelch it. The mounting holes around the chipset are not arranged in a square. They're in a rhombus:



I have no way to measure the "tilt" of the sides. But, as best as I can tell, the holes are equidistant (all sides appear to be 47mm):



The camera angle makes the actual measurement hard to see, but measuring it a couple of different ways (including just measuring the standoffs on the shield) all give me about 47mm.

As for height, assuming the maximum available height is the height of the exterior shield (and that a person wouldn't use that with a custom heatsink/fan setup), it looks like there's 1/2 inch or 12mm of space available (and I really wish this forum would stop arbitrarily rotating my photos):



With the bottom of the graphics card being right above this thing, I'd be amazed if there were any other kind of cooler that would fit.

[RedSector73]

Mine is mounted off the motherboard horizontally, so height isn't an issue, 47mm apart will make most CPU coolers too big. Just confirm by taking a measurement from outside edge of one of the holes to inside edge of the other, that will give you exact centres.

Thank you for doing this, btw.

[ationfictons]

I still get 47mm apart. But, I think the big problem will be matching the mounting hole rhombus pattern (as opposed to an actual square pattern).

If Asus would pay the cost of shipping, I'd probably just pack this thing up and RMA it (right now, it's sitting, disassembled, on a shelf gathering dust (I'm using another motherboard I had as a replacement)). But, from:

https://www.asus.com/us/support/article/818

it looks like I can purchase a "discounted" shipping label from them for "only" $40. To replace a $15 fan they never should have installed in their $350 motherboard in the first place.

[ationfictons]

I keep staring at this thing, trying to come up with alternative ways to cool that heatsink:

• A 10mm tall heatsink might work. The chipset, itself would take up a bit of the available 12mm, but there might be a couple of mm left to the bottom of the graphics card. Unfortunately, even if that's true, there's no way to mount it. I assume there has to be compression to transfer heat properly. So, just sticking it on with a piece of thermal putty won't do. But, the mounting holes are 47mm apart in a non-square pattern. It'd have to be a custom heatsink (IOW, someone like der8auer would have to mill a unique item out of a block of aluminum in his workshop -- normal humans need not apply).
  
• A 10mm tall fan comes to mind. The smallest Noctua produces is 40x40x10mm:
  
  https://noctua.at/en/products/fan/nf-a4x10-5v-pwm
  
  I don't know if the chipset fan's motherboard connector is PWM. But, there are a lot of problems with the idea:
  
  
  
  • Asus' chipset fan isn't directly cooling the chipset (i.e, it's not blowing air directly down on it). It's pushing air sideways to cool the heatsink next to it, and THAT's sitting on top of the chipset.
    
  • Asus' fan uses a triangular shape to mount to the whole assembly. Readily available, quality fans like Noctua's use a standard square pattern.
    
  • The hole over which Asus' fan is mounted is some screwy shape that's only about 30mm wide at its widest and maybe 20mm at its narrowest (I haven't measured that, just eyeballed it). So, just trying to fit a fan over/in that won't work.
    
  • If the replacement fan were mounted directly on the motherboard and Asus' mounting assembly just tossed in the trash where it belongs, we're back to the problem with the non-standard 47mm non-square mounting holes and no heatsink at all (no space if it's a direct stack of chipset > heatsink > fan).
    
  
  
• Liquid cooling with a cold plate just doesn't seem likely. Along with all the radiators and tubes, just getting a cold plate 10mm tall that could mount on the 47mm non-square mounting points probably won't work.
  

It's just amazing that any company would design something like this. The fan is the most likely thing to fail on the motherboard. It's a single point of failure. They made it custom and in a position with no way to use alternative solutions. And they won't sell their customers a direct replacement. Plus, of course, the whole computer and part of the motherboard, itself, has to be disassembled to get to the fan.