- Nov 13, 2018
- 16
- 2
- 515
Issue: Old fan quit, so I bought and installed a replacement. PC now boots all the way to the desktop, but shuts down after just a few minutes. Fan spins and everything looks & sounds normal up until that point.
Specific specs unknown, it is a standard Acer All-in-one, running Windows 10, with a Radeon 6550? graphics card. Old fan was a Coolmaster, new one is a Thermaltake.
As far as I can tell (and I'm barely computer literate) it may be an incompatible fan? The computer has a 4 pin male slot, but the fan's female end is only 3. Looking online for adaptors showed only 3 pin to MASSIVE 4 pins. This pc and fan both have plugs about 1/2 inch across with tiny pins, but every 4 pin I see on Amazon is 1 inch with pins at least 1/4 inch each. As ill-advised as it probably was, the 3 pin female fit over the 4 pin male comfortably, and runs perfectly for a time. Old fan was a 4 pin, in the same tiny 1/2 inch size (pins are like pencil lead thin).
Honestly, if this thing can be salvaged, great, but I know it's more than ready to replaced. There are some files I'd like to retrieve off it though, and I don't know how to do that with it in its current state. I am probably going to order another fan, but most do not show the end of the plug and do not mention it in the description.
A little background: I bought an Acer All-in-one about 5 years ago, because the price was right and my old pc badly needed replacing (it was like 10 yo and wearing out). This was obviously a poor choice, but I learned to deal with it. I live in this weird middle area where the idea of meddling with internal hardware is terrifying, but people keep telling me that some parts are just plug & play!, assuming you don't straight up visibly break something.
So far, this awful machine has been successfully "upgraded" by myself, by installing a new graphics card & plugging a hd tv directly into that. Drivers and such are no problem! Had to be done this way though, because after taking it to "professionals" who opened the case with pliers after watching a youtube how-to video and still kept it for a week after, told me there wasn't room and they couldn't modify the case to accommodate one for me, but I could always take it home and go at it with a Dremel! That'll be $50 now, for all the nothing we did! It is a nightmare to convince anyone to even look at an aio, so I didn't want to take it in for something supposedly as simple as a fan replacement (and be charged $50-100, depending on if they even did it or gave up.
ALTERNATIVELY, if there is a way for me to retrieve the files without fixing the fan or taking it to someone, I'd be happy with that, too.
Specific specs unknown, it is a standard Acer All-in-one, running Windows 10, with a Radeon 6550? graphics card. Old fan was a Coolmaster, new one is a Thermaltake.
As far as I can tell (and I'm barely computer literate) it may be an incompatible fan? The computer has a 4 pin male slot, but the fan's female end is only 3. Looking online for adaptors showed only 3 pin to MASSIVE 4 pins. This pc and fan both have plugs about 1/2 inch across with tiny pins, but every 4 pin I see on Amazon is 1 inch with pins at least 1/4 inch each. As ill-advised as it probably was, the 3 pin female fit over the 4 pin male comfortably, and runs perfectly for a time. Old fan was a 4 pin, in the same tiny 1/2 inch size (pins are like pencil lead thin).
Honestly, if this thing can be salvaged, great, but I know it's more than ready to replaced. There are some files I'd like to retrieve off it though, and I don't know how to do that with it in its current state. I am probably going to order another fan, but most do not show the end of the plug and do not mention it in the description.
A little background: I bought an Acer All-in-one about 5 years ago, because the price was right and my old pc badly needed replacing (it was like 10 yo and wearing out). This was obviously a poor choice, but I learned to deal with it. I live in this weird middle area where the idea of meddling with internal hardware is terrifying, but people keep telling me that some parts are just plug & play!, assuming you don't straight up visibly break something.
So far, this awful machine has been successfully "upgraded" by myself, by installing a new graphics card & plugging a hd tv directly into that. Drivers and such are no problem! Had to be done this way though, because after taking it to "professionals" who opened the case with pliers after watching a youtube how-to video and still kept it for a week after, told me there wasn't room and they couldn't modify the case to accommodate one for me, but I could always take it home and go at it with a Dremel! That'll be $50 now, for all the nothing we did! It is a nightmare to convince anyone to even look at an aio, so I didn't want to take it in for something supposedly as simple as a fan replacement (and be charged $50-100, depending on if they even did it or gave up.
ALTERNATIVELY, if there is a way for me to retrieve the files without fixing the fan or taking it to someone, I'd be happy with that, too.
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