Flickering LED case fan

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One of my stock fans appears to have a dying LED and it's flickering away. None of my other case fans do it so I'm thinking that's all it is and a simple fan change will fix it. BUT...I have noticed since day 1 when I power on some of the LED fans go out and come back on within a few seconds and stay on. Same story at shutdown. I forget whether they're the ones connected to the board or to my PSU. I'm thinking it's just a stock fan gone bad, what do you think?
 
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dwatterworth
I fully understand. In a forum question last week someone suggested buying a $300 box from Walmart and simply changing the GPU for a low budget gaming rig. I thought someone was going to track them down and give them a sound beating, maybe even the moderators haha. I also get bugged by the forum postings like 'I need a gaming rig build for $4000'...if you have that much money, figure it out yourself heh.

Yes, I think changing the whole fan (if the LED's are embedded in the fan and aren't replaceable) would be the easiest route here.
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dwatterworth

dwatterworth

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If the LED is flickering, it's probably a flaky connection. An Led doesn't have a ballast or anything, so it either works or it doesn't. The output can degrade but that just is a resulting dimming. You can try to look very closely at the wiring if you can see a broken connection, but usually those wires are buried in the fan body. 90% chance you'll have to replace it to fix it.

The LEDs blinking on and off briefly at system power on and off is normal, probably part of your systems power cycle to supply power and check for failures and then resume normal operation.
 
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Who knew rig building could throw up so many things? Either way I'd never change my rig for a store bought one ever. It's both a problem child and a high performance gaming beast :p

Do you mean change the whole fan?
 
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dwatterworth

dwatterworth

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I fully understand. In a forum question last week someone suggested buying a $300 box from Walmart and simply changing the GPU for a low budget gaming rig. I thought someone was going to track them down and give them a sound beating, maybe even the moderators haha. I also get bugged by the forum postings like 'I need a gaming rig build for $4000'...if you have that much money, figure it out yourself heh.

Yes, I think changing the whole fan (if the LED's are embedded in the fan and aren't replaceable) would be the easiest route here.
 
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Solution
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I've changed the fan out, but it's quite a bit louder than the stock one, it's coming from the center where the bearings are. If I'm not mistaken it's because it's running in "power" mode off the molex cable from the PSU (I'm out of fan headers :( ), so I'm thinking a splitter to run it and anoter fan off one header Can I use a 4 pin splitter for a 3 pin fan?
 
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Turns out the noise wasn't caused by power mode, but a case vibration. Fixed it now, using the supplied anti-vibration rubber grommets and the lighting issue hasn't happened with this fan :D. Operational noise is a bit louder than before when I had the stock fan, but the new fan is going all out

As an aside, this rig performs so well that I can't tolerate other computers, they're just so slow to me now. My laptop doesn't run quite as much as my rig does and it lags so bad (didn't notice quite as much before my rig existed) and the work computers are horribly slow for me :p. Even Windows 8 is behaving (and it's actually quite a good OS)
 
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dwatterworth

dwatterworth

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I know what you mean. After having systems at home and work with SSDs and quick memory, anytime I even look at one of the old dell boxes at work, I think I go into a small coma. The only downside to a fast computer is now you can't do things while it loads/installs. No more running to get snacks/drink when gaming. No more texting while a level changes over or an application loads up.
 
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Too right mate. I barely look away and it's booted. Installs are real quick even though they install to HDD. The only thing that lets it down that I've done is the cable routing, but I see that as an ongoing thing that I'll fix throughout Weapon X's lifespan up until I build X2. There's also the fan that I call my loud fan which occasionally rattles (suspected bad bearing), but I haven't found low enough profile fans that fit yet (such an intermittent thing you can forget it exists) and one screw that hasn't been machined. Other than that it's all good. Still, X2 will fix these

 
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