My Evesham is fitted with an MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum motherboard. The cooling fan on the motherboard runs normally most of the time but on increasingly frequent occasions almost stops and makes an annoying wow wow sound when doing so. Is this fan replaceable and, if so, where can I buy one? If it packs up permanently, what are the likely implications for my PC? The review in the link below shows the motherboard and has a number of pictures of the (gold) fan showing how it is fitted, including this one....

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum Motherboard Review - PCSTATS.com

Might be worth looking in Maplins for a universal which fits, or can be made to fit

Looks like it is pegged to the motherboard with an electrical plug, so no soldering. It reminds me in size of a graphics card fan.

on my old pc, the motherboard fan stopped working. So I just disconnected it, worked fine for 2 years like that folding 24x7.

Looks like it is pegged to the motherboard with an electrical plug, so no soldering. It reminds me in size of a graphics card fan.

Usually a bit smaller than a gfx card and like mannyo says it may work without one depending on how much power goes through the chip it's sat on

If the fan has a heatsink like that, then I would just disconnect the fan power from the motherboard. The airflow through the case should be good enough to keep the thing cool, indeed the airflow through the case may have meant the fan wasnt doing much anyway.

I only have a heat sink on my northbridge and I'm running a overclocked q6600 at 3.12ghz with no issues. I wouldn't worry about it too much, but a universal heatsink would only be a few quid anyway

I'd go buy a Zalman chipset cooler.

Fanless, cheap and still working 8 years on from when i replaced the original and very noisy fan.

It's advisable to have some sort of cooling on the north bridge, but the fan is purely for over-clockers and a slightly larger passive heat sink in place of that lot would do just fine

Maplin > Zalman Northbridge Silent Cooler

The one I used was the square one, but I am sure the porcupine design will work just fine.

Zalman might make a fanless heatsink you could attach with

thermal glue

Zalman Silent Motherboard Heatsinks

Arctic Silver 3 & Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive