I have a Packard Bell 6810 SLI bought 3 years ago and it has given me endless problems but the latest one was that BIOS said the CPU was overheating. After reading various threads here and elsewhere I decided to have a go at cleaning the fan, which is manufactured by AVC. I found that that both fan and heatsink were totally clogged with dust so I dismantled the assembly and removed the dust.
I then reassembled them and removed the old thermal pad and applied Thermal Paste and refitted the heatsink/fan. It seemed to work OK and I played the videogame Far Cry for about an hour to see what effect it it would have on the temperature.I then shut the PC down and reopened it, going STRAIGHT into BIOS to see what the temp was, and was alarmed to see that the fan SPEED showed as 0 RPM. I ran the PC with the side off and sure enough the fan was dead.
I've had the fan off tonight and connected it to a 9 Volt DC battery (it's a 12 volt fan) and it worked OK.
Put it back in the PC and it's dead.
Any ideas?

Cheers, Alan3-wires on fan?  Fan speed sensor is shot.
4-wires on fan?  Fan PWM control is shot.Thanks Commando. It's a 3 wire pin, Black/Red/White. If the Fan Speed Sensor is shot, is that a repairable problem?Replace fan.Went out this after and took the heatsink and fan assembly into a local PC shop and bought a replacement for £12. Put it in, switched the PC on with the side off and .............nothing.It just sits there like a dog turd.BIOS setting or motherboard problem.

You said:  "...Packard Bell 6810 SLI bought 3 years ago and it has given me endless problems..."
Packard Bell does does RECOGNIZE that model number for the UK.

Is fan cable long enough to reach to case fan connector (if it has one)?I had no idea where the "case fan connector" was so I did a Google and found one Power Unit where it was an additional lead.There's none on my power unit so I checked the motherboard and all I could find was a 2 pin (male) connector marked "NB FAN" which my fans' 3 pin socket won't fit.There's a loose 4 pin connector under one of the 2 GPU's and another loose connector marked "P7".
The Ipower 6810 SLI isn't a common model but here are the specs-

[Saving space, attachment deleted by admin]Enter BIOS---PC Health---CPU Smart Fan Control
If Enabled, then change to Disable.

Not sure exactly what it means, but something on motherboard is preventing the fan from running.

On 3-wire fan, 1 is power, 1 is power return, 1 is speed sensor
On 4-wire fan, 1 is power, 1 is power return, 1 is speed sensor, 1 is speed controlThanks again for the advice Commando.I tried disabling the Smart Fan Control and also uninstalled Speedfan but neither of these did any good and I am back at square one.Any more ideas? It is back gathering dust  Quote from: Ankylosaurus on October 31, 2009, 02:41:28 PM

...
1.  I checked the motherboard and all I could find was a 2 pin (male) connector marked "NB FAN" which my fans' 3 pin socket won't fit.
2.  There's a loose 4 pin connector under one of the 2 GPU's and another loose connector marked "P7"...