Threw A Blade
The main PC in the house had been making whining noises for the past few months. This morning, it became sufficiently annoying for me to open up the computer and poke around itside to see if anything was loose. The noise wasn’t coming from the case fans. It was definitely coming from the CPU fan, which I tapped a few times to see if it could knock it back into some non-whining state. I didn’t have a flashlight, so it was a matter of squinting and hoping the tapping would work. The noise did quiet down, and I put the cover back on the computer, but there was a lingering dust odor (as usual, the insides of the case were filled with dust bunnies). After a few minutes, the monitor went black and the machine POSTed as it shut down abruptly. Yes, the fan got quiet because it stopped running.
I opened up the computer again and pulled the case out further from underneath the desk. The heat sink was hot to the touch, and, surprise, there was a gap in the CPU fan blades: one of the blades actually came off and was not jamming the fan. I found the screwdriver and pulled out the fan assembly, broken blade and all. I needed to replace this today.
I actually went to BestBuy, because it was close and because we have a left over gift certificate to use up. BestBuy had a few 80mm case fans — LEDs in the spinning parts and all — but no 70mm fan for the heat sink assembly. The sales guy there did say there was a computer parts store a few blocks down the street on Ridge Road, near Pearl. This turned out to be Computer Surplus Outlet, but the proprietor (a surprisingly older guy: it was a little grandmom-and-grandpop store) didn’t have Athlon heat sink assemblies, just a pile of Intel slot types. He suggested a place called Quest Technology a few minutes away on Pearl (“across the street from this big Catholic Church”). I thought of going to the Circuit City near the BestBuy, but decided that I’d have even less luck there: of the big box stores, only CompUSA tends to stock random computer parts for DIY upgraders.
I didn’t find the place on Pearl before I hit W. 25th Street and decided to go home for lunch and a more thorough Internet search for the little computer stores in the area as well as finding the nearest CompUSA for the worst case. I did find Quest Technology on Pearl Road in Parma, though not near a Catholic church. The storefront was tiny and I almost missed it, even though I knew where it was on the 2nd try. I called them before leaving and found out that they did have CPU fans. I won’t be able to find the needed fan on its own: I’d need to buy the whole assembly. (While there, I also picked up a generic USB 2.0 card, since I had the case open anyway. My thinking is that this will help existing file transfer from the CompactFlash card, and will let me hook up an external hard drive on the computer, so I have a place to put the Alaska photos that we’ll take in a few months.) Anyway, a big thumbs up for Quest, because they’re the kind of computer store that I like to know about, in case some small part goes out of whack and I need to replace it in a hurry.
There’s still a vibration noise coming from the PC even with the new fan in place: something else around the heat sink is loose. But at least the Athlon isn’t shutting down from a critical overheating condition now.
(A few years ago, I was watching the sysadmin of a big financial services company trying to get a bunch of Sun Ultra 1s working. He’d have them on their sides, because of work-area considerations (everything was a mess because this was after a couple of weeks after 9/11, and I was there helping them recover the backup tapes and drives for that particular unit; we were all in ad hoc quarters in Jersey City with computer parts strewn all over our appropriated cubicles). After booting the machines, they’d spontaneously shut down. This went on for a few cycles until I noticed that, when he had the boxes on their sides, the cooling vents were on the bottom and therefore were being blocked by the desk. They ran fine propped up on their other side.)