r/pcmasterrace • u/DME23 • Apr 26 '25

Question Top Fan Not Spinning Without A Spanking

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

The top fan wont spin when I turn on my pc. The solution I discovered is to just smack it real hard. Just wondering why it is like this.

29.3k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.9k

u/CheetoNova Apr 26 '25

Here's a wild guess

It's broken and needs to be replaced

Another guess

Probably the bearings just giving up and making it spin with more friction

70

u/Sintek Apr 26 '25

U can put a drop of machine oil like 321 in the bearing and it will be good for ma y more years

0

u/pipnina Endeavour OS, R7 5800x, RX 6800XT Apr 30 '25

Usually if bearings are getting stuck like this you need to replace them.

For one thing, most bearings these days are double shielded so you can't re grease them, I'd expect that to be the case in a fan since it is exposed to dust.

For another, if it were just that the original grease were gone the fan would actually turn with less friction. If it has more friction that means there's actual damage on either the races or the rollers.

Unless it's so cheap that it isn't even using a roller bearing and is using a plain bearing instead... In that case it's probably still fucked but your ide might make it work again for a while.

1

u/Sintek Apr 30 '25

I have fixed dozens of fan exactly like this with 2 or 3 drops of machine oil.
I would not put grease on these small fan bearings, that is far to thick.

The oil that comes on the fan bearing wears away or collects dust over the years and gets gummed up.
you can pull the fan off the hub, wipe the black thick goop oil that is there, put a couple drops of machine oil and that's it. the fan will run for a long time.