On Sun, 13 Jun 2010 08:35:38 -0400, PeterD ǝʇoɹʍ:

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,

snip

No of course it's not necessarily true. I can't speak for every frigging
manufacturer out there. Certainly both cases are true, MB temperature
monitors and monitored fans and both. My MSI MB has a monitored rear
120mm fan and MB temperature monitoring. Most of the boards I've dealt
with are Intel, Asus, and MSI. I can only recall one using a small fan on
the pci bridge chip. The rest were equipped with a large heat sink. The
emphasis on using one large fan in the rear to quietly exhaust inside air
rather than having a bunch of small 5000 rpm fans making a racket.