busted heatsink???

[bluesmap]

woke up this morning and my heatsink fan would not work. on boot up i get an error about fan not spinning so system would not start up. everything was working fine yesterday before i shut down for the night. any help on what could possibly be wrong?

my hardware:
asus p5nsli
c2d interl e6300
7900gs
1 sata drive 3 ide drives

i need this pc for work please help

 

[infect0]

1. Make sure the fan is really not spinning.

2. If fan is not spinning check the connections to make sure everything is plugged in.

3. If everything is plugged in you most likely have a fan that has gone bad.

 

[bluesmap]

i connected the fan to the connector which is used for the case fan. doing that worked even though its 3 pins vs 4 pins connection. i think doing it that way there is no control for the fan speed but the fan works that way. would it be safe to connect the heatsink fan to the case fan connector and run my system that way?

 

[Deton]

i connected the fan to the connector which is used for the case fan. doing that worked even though its 3 pins vs 4 pins connection. i think doing it that way there is no control for the fan speed but the fan works that way. would it be safe to connect the heatsink fan to the case fan connector and run my system that way?

You'll be fine, just MOBO won't monitor/control the fan any more. The only draw back is if it's die then you won't know until your CPU blow up but most system will shut down first if it's over heated.