On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:17:21 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:13:51 +0000, Meat Plow ??o??:

On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 21:43:36 +0000, root ??o??:

New motherboards often have a small fan covering one of the bridge
chips. Likewise, expensive graphics cards have a fan on their
processor. These fans are cheaply made.

Is there protection for the MB/card to keep their chips from frying if
the tiny little fan fails?

No.

I'll revise that and say that if said fan is monitored then there can be
an audible alert set up if the fan drops below a certain RPM. The fan
would need to have three wires to be monitored.

Not necessarily true. THe chipset could easily have an
over-temperature detection circuit built into the die. At least that's
how I'd do it, since that would detect multiple problems that
monitoring just the fan's rotation would not do. After all, a fan
turning is not always a fan delivering power!

Also in BIOS there should
be a setting to alert if the mainboard goes over a set temperature limit.
The default limits are usually good enough to use.