Acer TC-705 i7 CPU Fan is not spinning. Is it due to Graphics Card which is faulty that's causing?

I joined the Forum in 2023 but as my Acer TC-705 i7-4790 is out of action, I am having great difficulty in accessing the Forum. My WinXP system is rejected and my Win7 system the same (clock is wrong!).

I would like to ask a question about the original Graphics Card. My CPU Fan is not spinning (even though the fan itself does work when supplied with a small voltage across two of the four pins in the white plug). I have been told by an engineer that my Graphics Card is faulty and that is causing the Fan problem.

Please could a member write to me at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@madasafish.com as to how I can access the Forum.

Thank you.

[Edited the content to hide personal information]

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billsey

Uh, you posted to the forum, so you can access it. :) If the CPU fan isn't working I can't see any reason that would have anything to do with a GPU card. Was the tech confused about CPU vs GPU? Does your system have an actual graphics card installed, or does it just use the graphics on the motherboard?

Victor77

Dear Billsey, thank you very much for kindly answering my query. I am sorry but I had difficulty in accessing the Forum after originally getting messages "Error code: SSL_ERROR_PROTOCOL_VERSION_ALERT" on my WinXP desktop Acer 7700GX.

On my Win7 Acer 7600GT, I am able to read your message. Many thanks.

I live in West London and I noticed a computer repairs service facility in Golders Green, NW11 who charge £35 to diagnose a computer fault. A friend helped carry the machine over to there. I am nearly 80 now! The engineer told me a few days later that my Graphics Card was the cause of the fan not spinning. I am not using the on-board graphics which I presume are of a lesser specification.

Before I took the Acer TC-705 i7-4790 over to the engineer, I disconnected from the motherboard the small white plug on the CPU Fan and applied a small external voltage of 6v to the red and black pins (not entirely easy to do) directly to the side of the plug where there are very small openings and I saw the fan responded so I reported this to the engineer that it seems that the fan itself is working.

The engineer suggested ordering a replacement Graphics Card - a Radeon R7-240. I looked this up on the Web and there are a couple of comments from Acer users that this requires a 400w or greater PSU. The Acer TC-705 i7-4790 comes with a 300w only PSU. Furthermore, it exactly fits in between structural parts of the computer so I imagine one has to be very careful in finding a replacement that fits OK.

The R7-240 is available from Amazon for about £40 and the engineer said that this Graphics Card is the one that comes with the Acer. I don't know if that is so as the engineer has my machine. He said that to fit the R7-240 and check it all out would also cost another £99. This would mean an expense of £174 to date apart from train fares for my friend altogether about £200. This is twice what I paid for the Acer in 2023.

I have decided to collect my Acer tomorrow from the engineer's home without him doing anything more.

I will try to find someone local to investigate further as it is a nice machine and much less complicated than my two old Acers so I am surprised that it has gone wrong.

As the fan is not spinning, I am nervous that the CPU will overheat but I wonder if the on-board graphics work (if it really is a graphics card problem) can be tried (do you have to alter this in the BIOS?}

Prior to the fan problem, I had a software problem when my Outlook.com account changed into the Russian language (I think it was). Then I got a message that my C: Drive was faulty and after waiting 7 hours of attempted software repairs by the Acer, I got a message that it cannot be repaired. Whether or not these things have caused my fan problem I don't know. I thought that even without a C: Drive being connected that the fan starts spinning when you turn on the computer?

Thank you again for any suggestions/help.

Regards, Victor Sunday 27th April 2025 11.28am (London)

Victor77

Dear Billsey, I have twice attempted to reply to you but I do not know whether my message has got through? Regards, Victor 27th April 2025.

Victor77

Dear Billsey,

I see that one of my messages got through. Update: I have just taken back my Acer TC-705 i7-4790 from the engineer in NW11 having paid £35 for a diagnosis. I was surprised that he said that the Graphics Card is faulty as there was no sign of a stressed screen display nor any burning smell etc. I have an old Asus 512Mb PCI Express 16 graphics card which I could try to see if the CPU Fan starts spinning again.

I have now taken my Acer to a friend's shop in Ealing close to home as he has a friend who looks after the shop's computers and CCTV, etc. to see if he could also help me.

There is a Web-advertised TC-705 (with added SSD and upgraded Graphics) for a very reasonable price available for collection and I have attempted five times to purchase it with agreement of the seller with myself and a friend (to carry it) to travel to Gravesend (2 hours trains) to collect it but so far my e-mails via E-Bay have not been replied to yet.

Whilst the TC-705 Fan is not spinning, I am worried that the CPU would heat up too much however I do have a small hoover gadget that also blows out cold air which I could rig up temporarily whilst a new diagnosis is being sought.

ACER REPAIRS: I have been told by a computer IT firm that Acer were not very helpful to supply spares and I presume they do not want to hear from non computer-savvy octogenerians like me.

Thanks for any further comments.

Regards, Victor77 London, UK. 2.48pm.

Victor77

Dear Billsey,

UPDATE: I notice that the Graphics Card supplied with my Acer TC-705 i704790 is indeed the R7-240 that the NW11 engineer mentioned was faulty and thus, he believes, is preventing the CPU Fan from spinning.

Strangely, this is the card that is mentioned on the Web or the Forum as requiring a 400w or greater PSU. Nonetheless, the engineer was right in saying that this is the supplied Graphics Card with my TC-705 i7-4790.

REMOVAL of R7-240: I wonder if you or any Forum member who actually still runs a TC-705 i704790 could answer the following questions:

when both the Graphics Card and the on-board graphics are available (and undamaged), how do you choose which one or the other you want to be working? Is there an entry in the Bios that needs to be selected? When I purchased the TC-705 i7-4790 in 2023, I assumed that the dedicated Graphics Card prevailed and didn't attempt to change anything in the Bios.
if you simply remove the R7-240, does the on-board graphics take over? and please what is the rating of the on-board graphics?
I notice a black plastic lever next to the R7-240 Graphics Card. Does this get pressed down or lifted up? I don't want it to get broken! Also, how do you actually take out the R7-240 from its socket on the motherboard? Are there screws to undo on one of the metal parts or does it come out of a natural push-in placement?

Thank you for any expert help.

Regards, Victor 77 29th April 2025 11.05am. (London, UK).

billsey

Sorry for the slow response, I ended up getting busier than normal the last few days. Just pull the GPU card out, remembering there is a plastic latch that holds it in place, and use the onboard video port for diagnosis. The system, during initial boot, disables the onboard graphics if it detects a GPU card installed. So, if the GPU card isn't physically there it won't disable the onboard GPU and will instead allow that port to work. With the GPU card removed and a monitor connected to the HDMI port on the back of the computer, try turning it on to see if anything works. If the fan still doesn't spin up and the system doesn't give any beeps then we know the issue wasn't the graphics card and we'll have to dive deeper into the diagnostic process. If the fan does spin up and you either get one short beep after a bit or a sequence of long and short beeps, but nothing on the monitor then either the display circuit is having issues (one short beep at the end of POST typically means POST didn't find any errors and is going to go ahead and load the OS) or there is an issue identified during POST. For the latter we will want to listen to the beep pattern to look up the error it found. Needless to say, if you do get a display and the system gets through POST successfully the next step is the OS load, and if there's an error it should display that for you.

Victor77

Dear Billsey,

Thank you very much for your kind and learned observations.

Since I last posted on the Forum, my friend (who helped carry the Acer TC-705 i7-4790 to NW11) introduced me to another friend of his who having read my posting on the Forum very kindly offered to take my TC-705 away for testing, etc. pro-bono. This gentleman has over 30 years experience with computers and works as a university computer technician - hopefully he will be able to sort out what's wrong.

It will be interesting to see whether simply removing the R7-240 Graphics Card and allowing the onboard graphics to come into play causes my CPU Fan to spin again. I wonder what the onboard Graphics specification is? I presume it is a fair bit lower?

I mentioned to the technician when I spoke to him over the 'phone that I am worried that the CPU without any coooling might get overheated and become damaged. He mentioned that there is a "throttle" facility on some computers that may prevent this. In any event, I do have a freestanding mini-fan that can sit inside the computer which may help a bit.

When my computer was last working with a display it indicated that a repair was necessary but after 7 hours, then indicated that the computer cannot be repaired. I take it therefore that there was a software fault as well. I took out the WD Green 2Tb hard drive and placed it in a Fideco Sata Caddy and let the two partitions get tested for defects and after some automatic adjustments (including using Chkdsk /f on each drive partition), the two partitions do appear to be OK but of course, using the caddy.

The technician is collecting my TC-705 on Monday evening 5th May when he will be visiting Ealing again.

I will report further after this.

Thank you again, Victor 30th April 2025 11.07am (London, UK).

Victor77

Dear Camila89

Thank you very much for kindly posting re. my fan problem with my Acer TC-705 i7-4790.

As far as I can see, the fan itself is in good physical condition and clean and I know that it can spin because I disconnected the 4-pin small white plug that goes into the socket on the motherboard and connected an external voltage of about 6v DC to the plug using the red and black pins only (not so easy to do) to see what would happen and the fan started spinning. I believe that the actual voltage it uses is likely 12v but I wanted to be cautious.

I have not attempted to access the Bios as the fan is not cooling the CPU.

I think that the 300w PSU is working.

I don't quite know how all this trouble started. It seemed to follow my Outlook.com changing into Russian over Easter, then a System Restore not working and finally the automatic repairing of my software (for 7 hours!) also failing to work.

As mentioned, an experienced computer technician will be collecting my Acer on Monday evening to carry out tests and hopefully restore my Acer and also try to use my existing 2Tb WD Green drive (2 partitions of 1Tb each) which appears to be in good order according to tests of both partitions by me on a Sata Caddy.

I will let you know how I get on.

Regards, Victor 30/4/2025 5.08pm (London time)

billsey

The technician was correct in regards to high CPU temperatures. When the temp exceeds 100C the CPU will just turn off to mitigate the chance for damage, so it's really hard to damage one only with temperature. A non-working fan by itself will only cause high temperatures, so that isn't a worry at least. The cause of the fan problem though can be an issue. As suggested it could actually be a power supply problem, though more often it's the fan itself. Since you were able to get the fan to spin using a voltage source I lean toward either a power supply, motherboard or BIOS issue. The errors you saw about needing a repair was likely Windows complaining about corrupted files, not something pointing at hardware. It's hard to corrupts files with just a power supply issue and more likely with a motherboard problem.

Victor77

Thanks very much for your further posting Billsey. I am glad to know that CPUs have some protection. In any event, I will offer the technician my mini-fan gadget. At home, I run both my two much older Acer computers 7700GX (using WinXP and OE6) and 7600GT (using Win7) with the sides of their cases off and then I blow large but quiet freestanding Panasonic fans onto the hot area.

If the Acer PSU is faulty, I would be happy to order a new (400w this time and a quiet make) but I am worried that the space where the existing PSU is fitted is very tight with various structures hemming it in whereas on the old Acer Veriton machines there is ample room around the PSU I think. I would be prepared to purchase both an R7-240 Graphics Card and a new PSU but I am less inclined to have a new motherboard fitted. In such a case, I would likely scrap the TC-705 and keep it for spare parts.

Can you or another TC-705 owner tell me what Bios settings exist for Graphics and the Fan?

I have used the Bios in my 7600GT many times (pressing Delete) checking drives (master and/or slave etc) and priority and I know that the computer won't work if the settings and/or IDE Pins are mixed up.

Regards, Victor 30th April 2025 11.15pm (London, UK).

billsey

In your BIOS, using the Advanced tab, then going to PC Health Status, there is a Smart Fan setting. With Smart Fan enabled the system adjust the fan speed based on temperatures, with it disabled it should run the fan at the same speed all the time, I believe. There are also settings to shutdown on higher temperatures, that aren't quite high enough to trigger the hardware shutdown that happens when the CPU reaches 100C. There is also the Advanced Chipset Configuration that allows you to enable or disable the Turbo Boost function on the CPU. There isn't any BIOS option for the GPU card that I'm aware of.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1337924#Comment_1337924

The below lists of parts are the oem CPU coolers and the oem GPUs and PSUs that were fitted to the Aspire TC-705 desktop by Acer, also this desktop was released with the Microsoft Windows 10 ML x64 and the Microsoft Windows 10 SL x64 operating systems from Acer.

If the oem cpu cooler fan doesn't spin' replace it with ether the oem cpu coolers listed below or with a 3rd party similar cpu cooler from Noctua that are the best cpu coolers around. Good luck and hope this assists you further in solving the problems that you are having with this desktop.

OEM CPU Coolers

OEM GPUs

OEM PSUs

If this answers your question and solved your query please "Click on Yes" or "Click on Like" if you find my answer useful👍

Victor77

Dear Billsey and StevenGen,

Thank you very much for your postings regarding my Fan problem with the Acer TC-705 i7-4790 desktop computer.

The computer technician kindly informed me yesterday that (unlike the first engineer in NW London) he does NOT find that my original R7-240 Graphics Card to be faulty but does find that the Fan does not respond on start-up even though we know that it does actually spin when tested on its own with an external DC Voltage applied (just 6v). He said that the coils may be faulty?

In your chart list of parts supplied with Acer computers, it show a "COOLER" assembly but, if it is just the fan that is faulty, I would only need the fan at the top of the cooler assembly with the short cable & white plug. But is this not a separate part? I would not want to interfere with the actual CPU and paste, etc.

Apart from the Fan not spinning, I explained earlier that before the Fan trouble, my software went wrong. Firstly, converting my Outlook.com into Russian (I think it was) and then the screen notifying me that a repair was being carried out. That repair was not effective and would not complete even after waiting 7 hours. From that time, my computer would not display onscreen with the usual desktop.

The technician suggested using an SSD (which is completely silent, I imagine) and I see that there is a recommended for my Acer an SSD at 1Tb (which would mean that I could dispense with my existing faulty 2Tb WD Green drive (presently in two partitions). Both 1Tb partitions are recognised in a Fideco Sata Caddy but the OS Partition will not start up the desktop and simply goes into the ineffective never-ending repair mode.

Alternatively, I presume that I could format the faulty OS 1Tb partition on the WD Green 2Tb hard drive and then re-install Win10 or even Win11 (if available) plus my 30 odd programmes. The other data half of my 2Tb drive still retains all my documents in good order so they can be left alone.

Thank you again for kindly assisting me.

Regards, Victor. London UK 11.51am.

Victor77

Dear Members, just a short update. My CPU Fan has been replaced by the technician by another kind and it duly spins when the Acer starts up. *If it is too noisy, then perhaps I could purchase a Noctua brand suitable fan which StevenGen mentioned in his posting two days ago. I would want to be replacing only the black fan itself and not interfering with the CPU. Maybe I can ask StevenGen about a suitable Noctua fan only model no. later if need be.

It therefore now seems that both my existing Graphics Card R7-240 and my PSU (300w) were thankfully not faulty. I have asked the technician to format my 1Tb OS partition of my existing WD Green internal hard drive if he has time and then I can install my Win10 Dvd OS plus my 30 odd programmes during next week. A friend would help me if I forget how to install the OS. I will have my computer back at home on Monday evening. Maybe later, I might add the SSD 1Tb option if I run into problems with the WD drives that I have two of (both in two partitions).

Thank you again, Victor Saturday 10th May 2025 2.21pm London time.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1339269#Comment_1339269

Your Aspire TC-704 desktop with its socket LGA1150 Intel 4th Gen cpu doesn't need a sophisticated top end cpu cooler, the first thing that you should do is look at the measurements of the Noctua cpu cooler and if it will fit into the spaces around the cpu of your Aspire TC-705 desktops mainboard and it will not touch the ram modules, like shown below.

Measure this space as its the most critical space to determine the new cpu cooler size.

Noctua make allot of great cpu coolers for your socket LGA11050 cpu that your TC-705 desktop has, you can chose the appropriate cpu cooler by the socket LGA 1150 that your desktop has.

I don't know if you do allot of gaming, as and if you do then choose the highest Noctua NSPR of 228 rating that is appropriate for the cpu that your TC-705 has. So look at the Noctua LGA1150 Compatibility Centre LGA1150 cpu coolers and chose the cpu cooler model for the cpu model that you have e.g. i3-4150 or i5-4460 or the top of the range i7-4790 and then chose the appropriate NSPR rating and make sure that the cpu cooler size fits into your TC-705 spaces and doesn't hit the ram module.

This is the Noctua suggested appropriate cooler with the highest NSPR of 228 for the i7-4790 cpu, which are the models NH-D15 G2 or NH-D15 G2 HBC or the NH-D15 G2 LBC, but I would suggest that you fit the lower NSPR of 119 which is the model NH-C14S so look at this cpu cooler as I think that this is the most appropriate cpu cooler for your LGA1150 4th Gen cpu. Good luck and hope this helps you out further.

This is the Noctua that has a HSPR of 119 that is the model NH-C14S that I think that you should fit to your TC-705 desktop, but its your choice.

If this answers your question and solved your query please "Click on Yes" or "Click on Like" if you find my answer useful👍

Victor77

Dear StevenGen,

Thank you very much for kindly explaining more about my Fan queries.

In your posting above, the pictures and the word "cooler" seem to be referring to the whole item so to say, i.e. both the black plastic fan at the top (with a cable) and the shiny metal CPU heatsink/cooler. What I want is just the option to merely install a better quality (quiet) fan if necessary but leaving the CPU heatsink part as it is. Normally, I recall a fan has just 4 screws to undo and then it plugs in as usual with the small 4-pin white plug to be connected to the motherboard.

Please can you identify anything on the Web where I can just purchase the best Noctua quiet fan on its own if possible?

Gaming: No, I am the wrong generation for that (I am nearly 80)! But I like to view historic racehorse videos (like recordings of or about Sea The Stars, Mill Reef, Nijinsky, Secretariat and the mighty Man o' War etc who, over a century ago, won one race by 100 lengths).

Forum Query: How do you embed a photo in a posting please?

Thank you again, Victor Sunday 11th May 2025 11.28am (London, UK).

Larryodie

Attach your files by clicking on the paper clip icon below the select your attachment.

I'll let Stevegen answer your other question but Ebay (no used stuff) , Your Local electronic stores, computer shops ad Amazon should have what you need. Size is important. Good Luck.

I too am 80 + 3 .

Victor77

Thank you very much Larryodie!

We don't seem to have any electronic shops in Ealing (west London) these days unfortunately.

Victor Sunday 11th May 2025 8.15pm London, UK.

Larryodie

Which Fan have you picked ? Have you looked at Amazon , as they have many Noctrna fans.

Victor77

Dear Larryodie,

Thank you again for writing back. I will be getting my TC-705 i7-4790 computer back tomorrow evening and I will see what kind of fan the technician has kindly fitted for me. I was thinking that if the Noctua fans are very quiet, I could replace the one that is now in the machine whatever that may be, if necessary.