"Caroline" wrote in message
link.net...
"jakdedert" wrote
"Caroline" wrote
wrote
snip
For the original poster, start by checking that all of the fans are
still working. In particular the CPU fan. It's more likely that
you've got a bad fan than a bad power supply.

The fan works fine, thanks.

Sometimes I get a weird noise at startup that seem to be coming from
the
power
supply (possibly specifically its fan). Sounds like a motor scraping
against a
casing? The noise goes away after a few minutes. Been like this for a
couple of
years.

But it's too much to ask anyone to diagnose something like this sight
unseen.
Just noting...

Actually, that one's easy. The lube in the fan is drying up, and it
takes a
bit of time to warm up to the point where it flows and the fan works
quietly. The sound you hear is either the bearings scraping
metal-to-metal;
or else the bearings themselves have worn themselves to the point that
the
fan blade is no longer centered and is scraping against the housing
until
air flow dynamically centers it.

Either way, a new fan is indicated. Relubrication is possible, but may
be
beyond your skills; and is sometimes only a stop-gap solution (I've had
pretty good luck at it...about four out of five....). Of course, a new
power supply would 'include' a new fan....

I gave the re-lubrication a shot on Saturday. Took off the casing, took
out the
power supply and removed its side panels, took off the fan grille, studied
the
setup looking for bearings, pulled up the sticker in the center, and saw
the
center move when I pushed the fan. Looked about as close as I could get to
a
bearing. Put a few drops of "Zoom" oil in.

Sounds better. Haven't had the really big noise I have heard now and then
in the
past.

That's basically how it's done. I've washed the bearing out in the past
with degreaser (lighter fluid) before relubing, but couldn't tell you if
that worked better or not. In fact, in an emergency, I just squirted a bit
of lighter fluid in to re-flow the oil and resealed the fan. It worked
until I got around to actually doing it right.

One other thing I've taken to doing is packing with grease *after* doing all
the above. This, on the theory that if the bearings start to heat up, the
grease will melt into the bearing and provide a source of reserve
lubrication...pure supposition on my part, but I've had pretty good luck
getting them to last.

jak


Still shopping for power supplies. Found a Fortron at www.newegg.com IIRC
for
around $40 total that I think I'm going to go for.

Thanks.