Duron cooler
A week? ago my good old duron cooling fan, a ac copper silent 3 started to make funny noises. It sounded a little like a seeking harddisk. Well i obviously had to and did get a new one, i also considered getting a new CPU but seems socket A cpus arent available anymore. Well i wasnt seriously looking for an upgrade anyway, just curious.
Once i had the new cooler, (i bought the same as the previous) i thought i take the failing one appart. I expected to find some screws behind the stickers but no, there are no screws on the thing. To get it appart you have to pull the rotating part hard, nice design. As expected it was quit dirty in there, especially the ring magnet, i cleaned all parts except the ceramic bearing as there was some green lubricant on it that i couldnt replace if i cleaned it. Not really expecting it to work better i put it back together and, well it worked and was silent again :)
Murphy doesnt sleep though a day or 2 later the noise was back again :( So i repeat the procedure but sadly it made no difference this time. So being out of all options except 3, from which the first could damage my microwave and the second needs a sledge hammer that i dont have, i drop the thing by mistake, no really i didnt do it intentionally my 3rd option is actually taking the ceramic bearing appart and cleaning it with a bunch of paper towels. Ive taken a picture before doing that, sadly i didnt take more pics, like at the very start when it was really dirty …
The bearing is held together with a little metal ring that i somehow got off with a screw driver, and to my surprise it didnt fly through the room. After cleaning it and putting it back together i added a little bicycle oil. And it works and mosly silent. Anyone wants to bet how long it will last? I somehow think ill have to replace it with the new one soon …
One post a year hey? :)
That’s not your main computer is it? :O
Comment by nine — 2009-12-21 @ 04:13
Remember old plumbing law “Everything that can leak, will eventually leak. Everything that can’t will get clogged”.
In my experience, one need to check how freely blades rotate – if they can’t rotate from moderate blow of air, it usually means that bearing is screwed up. All of my boxes here have only system fan though.
Comment by Kostya — 2009-12-21 @ 06:18
Need cleanup and fresh oil/grease.
If still making noise, bearing is damaged (hard to fix).
Comment by sylware — 2009-12-21 @ 16:47
> That’s not your main computer is it? :O
No, but i do still use it
> In my experience, one need to check how freely blades rotate – if they can’t rotate from
> moderate blow of air, it usually means that bearing is screwed up. All of my boxes here
> have only system fan though.
They do rotate from blowing at them, they also keep rotating for ~5sec if i pull the wire from the board. So it does not appear that its too much friction.
> If still making noise, bearing is damaged (hard to fix).
Yes, thats probably it :(
When i cleaned it i removed a tiny metal splinter that was sitting on the bearing, i guess that must have broken off somewhere. Its relativly silent currently but it still makes some faint clickering noise
Comment by Michael — 2009-12-21 @ 17:47
I had similar issue with cooler on my nVidia 5900XT about 4 years ago. IIRC I cleaned it couple of times, and when it finally bothered me, I’ve just removed that damn metal ring. Well, cooler was working silently for years and started to make noise just few days ago. After a clean up (there were tons of dust inside) it’s silent again. I hope it won’t disturb me in the next 2 years. :)
Comment by Abradoks — 2010-01-06 @ 13:31
Bicycle oil isn’t good at high melting points which you fan will need. High melt point copper grease – works. Such as what is used with car brakes, uncontaminated grease.
Those socket a (370) cpu ran fans fast, more so if coppermine. I still have two 1ghz cpu’s (good internet pc’s and more), on the one that isn’t coppemine i have a fan controller. I can run it at much slow speed still cool in high summer temps.
The coppermine cpu bios has the speed set at max, but have reduced this though not as much as can do for non coppermine cpu. None of the socket a (370) pc’s are overclocked.
Then i’ve also reduced to quieter noise levels two northwood p4 ht cpu’s. Northwood notorious loud fans as need loads of cooling (northwood p4 basicaly were beta test retail cpu’s, in the intel vs amd p4 wars).
Just hate noisy pc’s, there’s no need for them to make a noise. Hard drives is another matter how far can the aam be taken before performance decrease, normaly decreases before the drive noise does. Let’s hope the noiseless ssd drives prove reliable. Though maybe superseeded as they are inhearant of some bloack problems that nand flash drives have. Can only be written/erased and rewritten so many times before block failure. Would be nice if all cambridge technology became a reality. What we have read of them over the years, only to find they seem always to stumble at the last hurdle. Their infinitive cpu power, huge optical disc storage and their other dreams.
Comment by Rob — 2010-06-23 @ 22:07