Mine's been "grinding" away during the boot process for months and still
works. I'll let it grind away 'til it quits, then either replace or remove
it. Keep in mind that when installing a third-party passive heatsink you'll
likely need to remove the mobo first. I may decide to remove the fan and
lubricate its bearing, as that sometimes works to quieten them down.

As per another suggestion, I think removing the fan altogether is
acceptable, as other 875i mobos, like Asus, come with no fan. I suspect it
is there only to provide extra cooling in the event of extreme overclocking.

"Si" wrote in message
...
The Northbridge fan on my mobo has started making a kind of grinding sound
during the boot process. After windows has loaded it goes back to the
normal
noise it's supposed to make. Initally I thought the noise was coming from
one of my hard drives as it sounded like when the bearings go and even
went
as far as buying a new one! Anyway, this mobo is only a couple of months
old
and I was wondering if this is an easy thing to fix or should I take it
back
to the shop?

Cheers.

Si