If one of your PC fans suddenly stops spinning, there is no need to panic as it is a very common problem for most PC builders which occur at some point in their life. There are quite a number of PC fan manufacturers who produce a wide range of chassis fans for cooling and almost each one of them works with the same mechanism.
Now there are many threads on the internet where you can see that many are reporting the issue that all of a sudden the fans are not spinning. Therefore, we are here to help you out with some basic methods that will help you to cut down your effort to find an appropriate solution to fix the issue.
Step 1: Power source for your fans
As I said earlier, most modern fans need two different sources of power to run properly. One is for the RGB illumination and the other one is to provide the juice to power the fan. Hence, the first step will be to double-check if the fan header on the motherboard that you have plugged the fan with.
However, if you running the fans through a fan hub, then you need to check if the power source of the fan header is properly connected or not.
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Step 2: Fan Voltage settings
If you are done with Step 1 then you need to check if the voltage supply is working properly as the fans in order to run properly will need 12v of power. If there is a lower voltage being delivered by your motherboard harder then you need to fix the same from the BIOS.
Make sure to check the BIOS settings in order to ensure that the fan headers of your motherboard are enabled and are set up at auto.
Step 3: Restart and wait for the post
If both of the above-mentioned steps don’t give you any help then you need to do a hard check to ensure that the fans are ok. For that simply restart your computer and once it is on POST and then notice whether the fans are spinning or not. This is for the reason that when you simply boot up your machine, the MB controller does a full 12v/100% fan power on. This means that if your fans are running here, then they are ok, and you need to check every connector to ensure that they are properly connected.
Step 4: What to do when a Fan header is faulty?
You might be stuck with the fans for not having sufficient fan headers when your existing fan headers are not working and upon checking the fan you found that the fan is working fine when connected to another header. Now, you can either go for a fan hub or if you are not willing to spend for the hub at the moment then get a converter to connect them with SATA connectors.
Step 5: Fan bearings life
If you are running that system with all the fans for quite a long duration of time and all of a sudden they stopped working, then you should take a good look at them before coming to any conclusion. The bearing of those fans might have been choked and that might be responsible for the fans to stop spinning. In that case, make sure to clean the fans properly, especially the bearings, and then check after the thorough cleaning has been done. There are four major types of fan bearings that are widely used in the market.
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Summing up
If the above-mentioned steps fail to fix the issues then you need to check with the service centre to ensure that the fans are in perfect condition. Else you can always get a replacement if they are under warranty. However, it is strictly advisable to monitor closely the proper voltage and the RPM of the fans.
