Where'd my brain go?

Once again a prime opportunity for photos has passed by. I feel bad about that, but good that the project I just completed seems to have been successful.

Two weeks ago the computer started making noise; not the usual hum and spinning fan noise, but a buzz. It was coming from the interior of the case. A few days went by before I got around to opening the case while everything was working to see what the source of the noise was. I touched and held all obvious sources with actively moving parts -- hard drive, case fan, CPU fan and, finally, the video card fan. There it was. When the video card fan stopped the noise went away. OK, source located, maybe it will just be a constant in the future.

Not the case! Today Fran came up from her morning session and said, "It's a lot nosier. I can't take it. The computer's all yours." And noisier it was -- aggravating to the point of distraction. So, after lunch I tackled the problem. Power down, turn off power strip, open case, and with a little more fiddling around, remove the video card.

A trial spin of the fan showed that it wasn't happy spinning around. It came to a near immediate stop. A little bit of work and the fan case/heat sink assembly was removed from the board. With just a bit more work, the fan was separated from the heat sink. Now, how to lubricate the bugger. From past experience with larger, similar DC fans I knew stick-on labels covered important information like how to get to the shaft. Top label removed -- nothing there. Bottom label removed -- nothing there either. Huh? I poked and pried here and there and the spin-y part wouldn't separate from the fixed part. (Insert bad words here.)

Then I noticed a very, very small hole in the bottom of the assembly near the center. Oil hole? Very likely! I found an old syringe to prove that it would fit the hole (it did), and broke out the fine machine oil I've been using on just about anything in the house that needed oil. Two small drops were injected(!) into the hole. After a little waiting nothing leaked out. Good!

Reassembly went quickly. Too quickly as this would have been a good place to take a few pictures. Video card reinserted, power on and -- quiet. At least the same quiet as we had before this whole incident began.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Oh yeah. With the detailled instructions above, don't expect me to do this for you!