(Vanity) A little PC question (Vanity)

me | 6/20/2005 | me

[birbear]

Hi all you wonderful tech savvy guys (and gals).

I'm having some strange noises coming out of my PC. Sounds kind of like the power supply fan hitting something (what it could be hitting, I have no idea.)

There seems to be some debat among my local techies on if it's a power supply, or if it's a hard drive (I have 2 in the machine.)

What's your best guess? It's a 3 year old machine (Dell Dimension 4500) with a 250 watt power supply. The oldest of the two hard drives is probably 4 years old.

Any thoughts?

[BigSkyFreeper]

That'll work too. Especially if you do any upgrading down the road, you'll have enough "juice" to run it all. :)

My desktop came with a 450watt power supply, a single hard drive and a DVD drive. I upgraded my system and bought a CD-Writer Drive and a second hard drive, and along the way, got a good deal on a 600watt power supply.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Yeah, power supplies are surprisingly cheap nowadays. Replacing the power supply gives new life to the computer and extends the life of the computer in the long run for future upgrades and additions later. My thoughts are, 250watts is rather low by today's standards with the number of drives a person can add in their system, or upgrading a video card, or adding other cards in the PCI slots or upgrading memory. Everything attached to the motherboard draws current.

[Squantos]

Yep agree..... Only brand name puter I'll buy is a laptop, my desktops I build from components I select. Thank Maximum PC Magazine and freeper future snake eater for that in-expensive little hobby of mine....:o)

http://www.maximumpc.com/

[BigSkyFreeper]

I agree! Nothing satisfying than building your own PC piece by piece! Maximum PC is a great site! Extreme Tech is another one I enjoy visiting often.

[politicalwit]

Have you checked your CPU fan? It's not a bad idea to replace it...they are cheap and easy to install. Give the guts a good dusting while your at it. (include the power supply too.) If you change out the power supply get something larger than 250 watt...

[Squantos]

Less grief thus far......:o)

Local supplier lets me shop and ask the geeks questions and get real hands on assistance ........ Only way to fly IMO.

http://www.cpu.com

[BigSkyFreeper]

(Knock On Wood) So far, I've been pretty lucky with the online computer stores at eBay. Bought 512MB of RAM and the 600w power supply from an online store there. The service was prompt and fast! :)

[Squantos]

I'm old school with my money..... I like to hand cash to the vendor for my gadgets. I hear of awesome deals on e-bay but I don't use it at all. Just my choice of course....:o)

Stay safe !

[BigSkyFreeper]

I will admit I was a bit leery at first, but the turn around rate of the first purchase raised my confidence level for the next purchase. I agree it's better to actually make the face-to-face with the retailer, but living in the boonies, I have little options in that regard. :)

[Squantos]

LOL....agree on the boonies comment. I sometimes travel a couple hundred miles to the stores to shop. It's a day in the sunshine road tripping. Gets me some time in the sunlight. A few local Mom and Pop shops that have the basics on the shelves and such but CPU or Best Buy in the big city is where I get the motherboards, drives and gotta have gadgets & doodad's...... It's fun. My best source is folks that get rid of their "old" desktops. Cannibalism is a good thang with regards to puters......:o)

[Lokibob]

bump

[cowboyway]

Sounds like the squirrel is trying to get out. This is a standard Dell failure; it's in all their literature. It's part of their planned obsolescence policy.

Solution:
1) Remove it from your desk
2) Tie a 3/8" nylon rope to it
3) Give it to a friend who owns a boat
4) Buy a Mac

Mac

[JoJo Gunn]

Shadowace, you might need to ping others. If memory serves, I'd read where Dell uses a power supply connection that isn't standard, and you might possibly fry the motherboard?

[JoJo Gunn]

Food for thought. I don't know if things have changed since this was written:

http://www.easydesksoftware.com/news/news21.htm

"....So I did a search on the internet to purchase a Dell power supply, but found that no one on the internet sells one. I also found out that even if you hacked up the computer box to fit a standard ATX power supply, the wiring configuration is completely different, Compounding the pounding, Dell uses a standard ATX plug to attach to the motherboard and at this point the unknowing individual would plug in and fry the motherboard and toast the power supply. So the only choice I had was to go to Dell to get a power supply....."

[general_re]

Food for thought. I don't know if things have changed since this was written:

Newer Dells use standard ATX power supplies. For some of the older models, that wasn't true, but there are OEM suppliers out there with power supplies that match Dell's weird pinout - googling the model number should help find one if needed.

[JoeSixPack1]

Power supply's are $9.00, all the way up to the unimaginable price of $49.95. buy a new one and go from there.

[hiredhand]

Ditto....power supplies are relatively cheap. But on a related note....I've had some fairly TERRIBLE noises come from CPU fans recently!

You probably ought to at least have a good close "listen" and try to find out where the noise is coming from. You'll need to remove the outer casing from the PC to actually get your ear close to the components on and near the mother board. Losing a fan in a P/S can cause the P/S to overheat. But losing a fan on a modern CPU will most DEFINITELY cause it to overheat and potentially damage it. I've done this myself!

...there was lots of noise....and I promised to have a look at it on the weekend. Before the weekend, the noise stopped because the CPU fan failed COMPLETELY, and that Sunday the PC gave up it's "smoke" and stopped functioning. :-)

CPU fans are less expensive than power supplies too.

In my experience, hard drives die relatively quietly.

[ThePythonicCow]

I do much online buying, at websites well rated by ResellerRatings.com. I look for sites that have over a 9 rating (on a scale of 10), with at least a few dozen (usually a few hundred+) reviews. The result is excellent service, excellent price and excellent selection. My favorite site for computer components, such as mainboards, power supplies, cases and such, is Newegg.com.

[birbear]

Yeah, I saw something similar. That's why I got a Dell power supply off of ebay.

Thanks!

[Squantos]

Thanks for the info and links.....good deals......