NFOD

Heh, whaddya know. PCs can also fail from badly cooled chipsets. A quick google for Northbridge Fan Failure reveals 51,000 hits. Make that 51,001.

What happens when the fan fails on the northbridge chipset? Funny things. The sound and i/o goes bad, bus writes gets lost. etc... Why do they insist on putting the crappiest fans in hardware.

It's now replaced by a huge aluminium heatsink. I also spent 15 mins just cleaning off the old thermal paste, which was cooked to a solid clump on the chip. Had to use goo-gone.

Let's hope that funny smell from the other day was just the cat doing it's business in the catbox. Otherwise--hey--new PC :)