A very loud and angry PC

[Gelatinous Cube]

Like a wrathful god, or a fussy infant, my PC is just being plain loud. A highpitched whirring noise is being emmitted from it's depths. I've heard people say it could be a fan, at least one person has said it could be my Power Source. I'm leaning towards power source, as that seems to be where the noise is coming from when I opened the side and stuck my ear in.

Any advice? Help? Hints? Suggestions? I've taken to keeping the PC off and just reading history books when possible, to avoid the noise, but I'll run out of books eventually!

[Gelatinous Cube]

...I kicked it in the front several times, and it stopped making the noise. All the fans are still moving, it hasn't blown up or anything.. odd.

Can anyone shed light on what just happened? I have trouble believing all my PC problems can be solved by violence.

[Pent uP Rage]

Sounds like you have a fan going bad. Perhaps a fan inside the power supply?
Try to stop the fan while it's running with your finger or a Qtip. If the sound stops, that's the one

[OTZ]

Yep, I would definitely agree with the fan dianosis.

[CRS2117]

and if it's on the power supply I'd really reccomend getting another. It's just not worth the potential electric shock to replace the fan inside. You can get pretty cheap 350watt power supplies with the all important 120mm fan in them from ebuyer (should have the stock for both countries)

Edit:Ebuyer's offering and the one I use in my system the 350watt one

[Gelatinous Cube]

Yeah, I think i'll replace the Power Supply, it's definately the source of the noise.

What will happen if it dies off and I don't replace it? I don't really have the money to shell out for a Power Supply at the moment.

[Pent uP Rage]

If its a 2-fan PSU, then you'll probably be okay. If theres only one fan in it, then you're gonna have to replace something.

[WoodenTaco]

Well, as long as you have a modern harddrive, your computer shouldn't be in bad shape. These days there's very very little risk of a head crash from power loss. However, if the hard drive is over 5 years you are pushing it, I think. In that case, the entire hard drive could be destroyed in the event of a power loss.

You wouldn't experience a problem in any area other than the hard drive if your PSU fails completely.

However, if the fan dies, but the PSU keeps going, you could be in for a lot of trouble. There's little worse for a computer than heat.

[Pent uP Rage]

I don't see how a hard drive pertains to the fact his PSU fan is going bad. If the PSU totally craps out, then NOTHING is going to work. Not only that, but if the fan totally quits,he's looking at a potential FIRE HAZARD! (Trust me, I've seen more than one PC go up in smoke, literally)
You CAN change a fan in a PSU and it's crazy simple. And if you leave it unplugged for 24-48 hours, your risk of getting shocked decreases to nearly zero. Just be careful and don't touch the big coils. It'll be a LOT cheaper than buying a new PSU.

I'm not telling you to do it, but in your shoes, I'd just replace the fan.

[CRS2117]

if you do that, unplug the power and turn it on to discharge the capcitors as opposed to waiting 24 hours, not all power supplies have discharge resistors in them. I wouldn't reccomend it, but if you shop around you can get 120mm fan PSU's for about a tenner here, that's twenty dollars for you.

[Pent uP Rage]

Do as CRS said.(discharging) But, I'd still wait at least a day..just to be safe.

[WoodenTaco]

I don't see how a hard drive pertains to the fact his PSU fan is going bad. If the PSU totally craps out, then NOTHING is going to work.

Maybe you don't remember the oooold days of hard drives, but there once was a time when the RW heads on hard drives wouldn't move if the power was shut. The actuator was entirely dependant on system power, rather than using momentum like modern hard drives. That means that on an old hard drive, sudden power loss can be fatal - when a read/write head crashes into the hard drive platter the **** pretty much hits the fan. It destroys the heads and the platters, killing all the data permanently (barring a ~$1500 data recovery service, that is)

I thought it was fairly obvious that if the PSU dies the computer won't work, but that's pretty temporary. A dead hard drive is a much more serious and permanent problem than simply being unable to use the computer for a short while.

While the chances that the hard drive is that old are pretty slim it's good to be informed, I figure.

[CRS2117]

As far as I know, for the past twenty years hard drives have had spring loaded voice coils, so that when the power goes off, the RW heads automatically go off the platter and makes it safe to lug around. I say twenty years, because a long time ago when I had my 286 (It was a wonderful machine, and it's case was the cool 'cyberpunk dirt stained' beige look, 40mb hard drive, 1.44HD floppy drive, 2mb ram, 8mhz CPU, 8bit soundblaster, VGA graphics. I loved that machine, I really did) there was a command in dos3.0 that was ship.com, which would put the RW heads off the platter, it was impossible to use the computer after that, it's assumned you'd turn it off then as it'd be safe to ship. I upgraded it later on to dos 6.2, but kept the ship.com file because I thought it was so damn nifty, I'm sure it'd be easy to write a script to do that these days, but nearly totally unnessessary. Then again in my work I do get some old computers...

[Gelatinous Cube]

All fixed with a new fan inside the Power Supply. Thanks for the help.

[Pent uP Rage]

Nice, I see you're not dead either. Easier than buying a new PSU.