Puzzling Issue with Heatsink Fan

[Sebastian Mawer]

Hi,

I'm having an issue with my heatsink fan. I built this computer less than a week ago with no issues, but today when I woke up and turned the computer on, I notice that the heatsink fan wasn't working and my graphics card fan was spinning at 100% speed (very noisy).

I left it alone for a few minutes, then I tried turning the computer back on and it started. It worked for a few hours then the heatsink fan randomly just stopped spinning, my graphics card fan was spinning at 100% speed again and the computer shut down a few seconds later.

This continued to happen a few times, and because of needing access to my computer I decided to lay my tower down flat with the side panel off. I got it to work again with the tower lying flat, and as I moved the tower to its upright position the fan stopped working again. What I'm trying to say is that any time I try to put the tower in its upright position the heatsink fan stops working. Also, I noticed that sometimes (not all the times) when the fan isn't working it starts working when I unplug the power connections my graphics card, then once I plug back in my graphics card it still continues to work so I don't know if the power supply isn't sufficient or is faulty.

I have no idea what's causing this problem and I'm seriously stumped. These are my specs.

Intel® Core™ i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz Quad Core with Stock Heatsink
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Motherboard
Corsair Builder Series CXM 600W Modular 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX/EPS PSU
TP-Link TL-WN881ND 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Express Adapter
Crucial CT120M500SSD1 2.5-inch 120GB M500 SATA 6Gb/s Internal Solid State Drive
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 Mhz CL9 XMP

Anyone have any ideas as to what may be causing this issue?

 

[clutchc]

It sounds like the fan/motor bearing is bad. It is losing magnetic center. Then the motor stops. When you lay it horz, it falls/stays into place and runs. The PC shut down because the CPU overheated. I suspect the gfx card fan sped up because of all the ambient heat surrounding the CPU was being pulled into the card's shroud.

 

[Sebastian Mawer]

I don't think the CPU got chance to overheat. I think my motherboard must have some sort of mechanism that shuts the computer off if the heatsink fan is not spinning. But it may be that, thank you. I've ordered a new heatsink so when I install that I'd post here to see if that helps.

 

[clutchc]

I don't think the CPU got chance to overheat. I think my motherboard must have some sort of mechanism that shuts the computer off if the heatsink fan is not spinning. But it may be that, thank you. I've ordered a new heatsink so when I install that I'd post here to see if that helps.

That could be. Most Mbs today shut down if the PWM controller doesn't see RPM feedback... i.e. the fan is disconnected or stopped. Is this the stock heatsync/fan? I had a i5-3xxx awhile back that had a bad heat sync/fan right out of the box. I could move the fan/armature in and out several cms. It had the same issue as yours.

 

[Sebastian Mawer]

Yup its a stock cooler.