SUCCESS.
amazon delivered the 2 fans about an hour ago. i removed the side panel. the power cord from the fan dived behind the motherboard and i had no idea where it came out. also, i couldn't figure out how to remove the old fan because the power supply was in the way. so, i popped the top hoping i could get it back on lol.
voila. unscrewed the dead fan and, taking jdc's advice, i cut the power cord to the dead fan. installed the replacement. it was a 140mm. since i also bought a 120 too and there were numerous holes around the second opening, i installed the second one too.
both purring nicely.
http://s1063.photobucket.com/user/Ta...ml?sort=9&o=13
thanks again, you guys, you're the BEST <3
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU. 16GB DDR4-3200MHz RGB RAM. 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GPU. Windows 10. ViewSonic & Samsung monitors.