Motherboard failure? (technical)

Factual Questions
1

I apologize in advance for asking this question here, but I wasn’t really sure where a better place would be.

I have an ABit NF7 that’s been in use for about a year or so. The northbridge has a small fan/heatsink which died after a couple of months, but the system wasn’t showing any serious issues (in fact, I didn’t even notice for 3 months.)

Yesterday, my CPU temp shot up almost 10 degrees C. I finally decided this afternoon to shut the system down for a couple of hours while I was in class. When I came back and tried to reboot, I got a continuous POST beep of about 3-4 seconds, which should indicate a RAM problem (if the list of POST codes I found was correct.)

I swapped the one RAM stick around into all three RAM slots, but there was no difference in the behavior. I have a feeling it’s a dead northbridge, but there’s no way for me to be sure it’s not bad RAM (the only other working system I have is the laptop I’m writing this post on.) Does anyone think there’s a chance it’s NOT the northbridge?

Thanks in advance, folks.

2

And, on the 7th try, I got it seated so it will boot. Still running a bit hot (46c and climbing) but at least it works.

3

Not that I’m an expert PC technician, nor familiar with this particular motherboard, but I’d advise you to replace the fan ASAP. I don’t know your location, but with luck you will have a generic computer store nearby that sells components and will have a stock of small fans. I would also take the opportunity to check that the fins on both the northbridge and the CPU heatsinks are not clogged with dust and hair - check to see if theres a heatsink on your graphics card while you’re at it. One of those cans of compressed air will do a good job of clearing any clutter.

4

If its a standard fan, many shops carry the fans in question for just a few dollars and can be easily swapped out by someone with little or no computer skill, just be careful not to nick the motherboad mounting the new fan. Many of those CPU sensors are giving the “worst temp” on the board and other chips can read into it not just the CPU. IF replacing that fan fixes the cpu temp warning and you have no other apparent failures you are probably good to go indefinitely.