🚀 go-pugleaf

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Today I got to play my least favorite game. I'm sure many of you have
>played it too. It's called "find the source of that god-damned squeak
>coming from the computer before it drives me (even more) insane".
>
>My PC has been making an intermittent chirping sound - remarkably like
>that of a cricket - for the past few months. For a while it was
>bearable; a quick thump would chase it away, or it just wasn't loud
>enough to notice unless the environment was otherwise completely quiet
>anyway. But recently it's been getting louder and finally - after I
>realized that even playing music wouldn't cover the noise anymore - I
>decided it was Time. Time to move the furnishings and drag the Beast
>out of its dusty corner, crack open its night-black carapace, and
>Operate.
>
>This isn't the first time I've gone looking for this Squeak; it's a
>cunning noise that makes itself scarce as soon as I open the case.
>This makes locating it quite tedious, especially as the case has more
>fans than good sense would suggest(14, to be precise). I have to wait
>for the Squeak to make its presence known, gently open the case, and
>try to narrow down where it's coming from before it disappears. 
>
>This took two hours.
>
>I'm still not entirely sure it the cause was one of the CPU fans or if
>it was one of the cables nearby that -caught in the draft - was
>rattling against the heat-sink. I took no chances and oiled up the
>first and taped down the second (or was it the other way around?). It
>seems to have done the job, but I'm still not entirely convinced the
>problem is solved; this is a clever Squeak and it has been known to
>lay low for a few weeks before coming back with a vengeance. 

Pretty sure it is a fan, since I've gone through the exact same thing in
the past myself.

Only for me, the fan that squeaked and eventually started making a
grinding sound was in the power supply.

The grinding was because it was slowly eating itself, the bearings
slowly digging deeper into the fan itself and bringing the blades into
contact with the case of the power supply.

Ended up hot-swapping a new fan into it - just used a standard 80mm case
fan that used an inline plug and just threaded the cable into the PSU.

Had a cable hitting a fan in the past too, but that was more of a
scuffing sound, not a squeak.

Good luck finding it.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr 

On Tue, 17 Jan 2017 18:51:48 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Today I got to play my least favorite game. I'm sure many of you have
>played it too. It's called "find the source of that god-damned squeak
>coming from the computer before it drives me (even more) insane".
>
>My PC has been making an intermittent chirping sound - remarkably like
>that of a cricket - for the past few months.

For me, that's usually turned out to be fan bearings, I can usually
isolate it by tapping on individual fans with my finger.  It can get a
little trickier if it's a hard to get to fan like in a power supply
(or the most recent one I had to fix which was a fan for an older
laptop -- turned out to be a difficult to locate part).

On my most recent desktop PC purchases, I've been insisting on top of
the line PSUs (and modular cabled ones at that), because over time
they are my least favorite part to have to screw around with once the
PC gets old.  The "mediocre" no-name brand PSUs have not been good to
be over the long haul in the past.

Modular PSUs also help with airflow and cooling, which also makes the
fan bearings last longer, etc.

Since you mentioned it's only started in the last few months, if you
just want to try something quick & temporary, and/or for the sake of a
science experiment, you might try boosting the humidity of the room
its in and see if it goes away.  Sometimes fans get noisy when the air
gets dryer, then improve in the warmer more humid month.  At least
that might buy you some time before you need to do something.  Then
again if it's just a case fan its an easy and cheap fix.

On 2017-01-17, Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Today I got to play my least favorite game. I'm sure many of you have
> played it too. It's called "find the source of that god-damned squeak
> coming from the computer before it drives me (even more) insane".

I bought long leads for my peripherals and keep my PC in a cupboard on
the other side of the room, behind me. I also bought good fans
(Noctua) and I seriously can't hear my PC at all when it's on. The
loudest component is now the electrical whine from an LED on my monitor.

When you've got kids and they go to bed it really pays to drive that
noise floor down, it means you can use the PC for games at low volume
or, if you're just browsing the web, you get deep silence which is
just the thing after a busy day. :)

-- 
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:

> This isn't the first time I've gone looking for this Squeak; it's a
> cunning noise that makes itself scarce as soon as I open the case.
> This makes locating it quite tedious, especially as the case has more
> fans than good sense would suggest(14, to be precise).

I guess I have to ask. Why 14 fans? I have a high airflow case (HAF
912+) which means it has a large 200 mm fan in the front and one 120 mm
fan in the back. Even counting all the other fans in the case I think I
have a total of 6...

On Wed, 18 Jan 2017 16:04:05 +0200, Anssi Saari <a...@sci.fi> wrote:

>Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> This isn't the first time I've gone looking for this Squeak; it's a
>> cunning noise that makes itself scarce as soon as I open the case.
>> This makes locating it quite tedious, especially as the case has more
>> fans than good sense would suggest(14, to be precise).
>
>I guess I have to ask. Why 14 fans? I have a high airflow case (HAF
>912+) which means it has a large 200 mm fan in the front and one 120 mm
>fan in the back. Even counting all the other fans in the case I think I
>have a total of 6...

Short story: I went a bit overboard when I built the computer. It's a
HUGE tower*, and had space for all these extra fans, and I thought -
hey, maybe I wanna overclock it**, and what the hell, fans are
cheap***...

It's not all case fans, though; the CPU heatsink is a massive two-fan
thing, the GPU has two fans, and even the PSU has two fans. Then two
tiny fans on the hdd cooler (because why not?), and the rest are case
fans.

Of course, once I actually started using the machine, I quickly
realized this was all overkill and now most of those fans are idle,
unpowered. 

Thanks to some good sound-proofing, though, the machine is very quiet.
The first time I turned it on, I had to double-check to make sure it
was actually running. 


* big towers rock if you like to tinker, even if you don't use all the
space. I hate tiny cases where my hands barely fit. 

** never overclocked it... but man if I did, the temperature probably
wouldn't move up a notch ;-)


*** yes, I know that too many fans can actually be counter-productive
if you don't take into account airflow and make sure you are pulling
in as much air as you are blasting out. This ain't my first rodeo, son
;-)

On 1/18/2017 8:40 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

<why 14 fans?>
>
> *** yes, I know that too many fans can actually be counter-productive
> if you don't take into account airflow and make sure you are pulling
> in as much air as you are blasting out. This ain't my first rodeo, son
> ;-)
>
But the stories of things going wrong would be so much more entertaining 
if it was your first rodeo.  :)

-- 
Running the rec.arts.TV Channels Watched Survey.
Winter 2016 survey began Dec 01 and will end Feb 28

On Wed, 18 Jan 2017 11:20:57 -0800, Dimensional Traveler
<dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:

>On 1/18/2017 8:40 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>
><why 14 fans?>
>>
>> *** yes, I know that too many fans can actually be counter-productive
>> if you don't take into account airflow and make sure you are pulling
>> in as much air as you are blasting out. This ain't my first rodeo, son
>> ;-)
>>
>But the stories of things going wrong would be so much more entertaining 
>if it was your first rodeo.  :)

Oh, if THAT'S the sort of stories you want... Did I ever tell you
about the time I /snapped/ my motherboard trying to attach a heat-sink
fan? Or how I learned about the Dangers of Static Electricity in, "Oh
No, Now I Need a New Video Card!". And then there's the
real-oldie-but-still-goodie "Wait, 3.5" Disks aren't Hard Disks?" ;-)

On Tue, 17 Jan 2017 18:51:48 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:


>This isn't the first time I've gone looking for this Squeak; it's a
>cunning noise that makes itself scarce as soon as I open the case.
>This makes locating it quite tedious, especially as the case has more
>fans than good sense would suggest(14, to be precise). I have to wait
>for the Squeak to make its presence known, gently open the case, and
>try to narrow down where it's coming from before it disappears. 
>


Can you lay your hands on a stethoscope?

They're extremely handy for locating strange noises coming from a PC
without having to open up the case.

You might be able to at least get a decent idea of the area that the
squeak is coming from.
-- 
Rob

On Thu, 19 Jan 2017 09:04:58 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson 
>
>Oh, if THAT'S the sort of stories you want... Did I ever tell you
>about the time I /snapped/ my motherboard trying to attach a heat-sink
>fan? Or how I learned about the Dangers of Static Electricity in, "Oh
>No, Now I Need a New Video Card!". And then there's the
>real-oldie-but-still-goodie "Wait, 3.5" Disks aren't Hard Disks?" ;-)

I've snapped a motherboard before as well. I had 3 corners attached to
mountings inside a case, the fourth mounting was missing. It was a
huge tower with a Pentium II "slocket" on an LX  chipset which was
really heavy. I could see through the butchered case that the corner
nearest the heavy CPU was bending away from the case when I stood it
on its end. But I thought it would be OK. Which it was for a few days
at least.

Then it broke one night when I was sleeping. The PC didn't work
anymore after that for some reason.
-- 
Rob

On 2017-01-19, Mr Rob <noemail...@jsjsaiiowppw.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2017 09:04:58 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson 
>>
>>Oh, if THAT'S the sort of stories you want... Did I ever tell you
>>about the time I /snapped/ my motherboard trying to attach a heat-sink
>>fan? Or how I learned about the Dangers of Static Electricity in, "Oh
>>No, Now I Need a New Video Card!". And then there's the
>>real-oldie-but-still-goodie "Wait, 3.5" Disks aren't Hard Disks?" ;-)
>
> I've snapped a motherboard before as well. I had 3 corners attached to
> mountings inside a case, the fourth mounting was missing. It was a
> huge tower with a Pentium II "slocket" on an LX  chipset which was
> really heavy. I could see through the butchered case that the corner
> nearest the heavy CPU was bending away from the case when I stood it
> on its end. But I thought it would be OK. Which it was for a few days
> at least.
>
> Then it broke one night when I was sleeping. The PC didn't work
> anymore after that for some reason.

I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
juice but the PC survived.

-- 
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
wrote:

>I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>juice but the PC survived.

Haha!


I don't think anybody can beat Mrs Rob for crazy things connected to
electricity (not in a PC)

Two that immediately spring to mind are:

Plugging an extension lead into the wall - not to use it, but to 'cut
it to length' for where she wanted it to reach. She tried to cut it
with a serrated carving knife - whilst the lead was plugged in - and
switched on at the wall. The bang was huge and her hair was actually
smoldering and standing on end like a scene from a cartoon. She's very
lucky to have escaped with just a single small but very deep and nasty
burn in the crook of her elbow and a badly scorched scalp. The knife
blade had a lump melted out of it and looked like it had been in a
fire.


Many years ago when we were first married, we bought an electric
strimmer. Mrs Rob 'wired it up' but somehow managed to have two male
pins exposed - which I picked up ready to plug into the female
connector - and promptly got literally blasted off my feet. I was
wearing rubber gardening wellingtons at the time which I'm told
probably saved my life. My ears were ringing with tinnitus for weeks
after that and I still have a long jagged scar on my right index
finger where it literally split open like a banana skin.

I don't trust Mrs Rob around electricity anymore.

On 1/20/2017 10:36 AM, Mr Rob wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>> I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>> tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>> juice but the PC survived.
>
> Haha!
>
>
> I don't think anybody can beat Mrs Rob for crazy things connected to
> electricity (not in a PC)
>
> Two that immediately spring to mind are:
>
> Plugging an extension lead into the wall - not to use it, but to 'cut
> it to length' for where she wanted it to reach. She tried to cut it
> with a serrated carving knife - whilst the lead was plugged in - and
> switched on at the wall. The bang was huge and her hair was actually
> smoldering and standing on end like a scene from a cartoon. She's very
> lucky to have escaped with just a single small but very deep and nasty
> burn in the crook of her elbow and a badly scorched scalp. The knife
> blade had a lump melted out of it and looked like it had been in a
> fire.
>
>
> Many years ago when we were first married, we bought an electric
> strimmer. Mrs Rob 'wired it up' but somehow managed to have two male
> pins exposed - which I picked up ready to plug into the female
> connector - and promptly got literally blasted off my feet. I was
> wearing rubber gardening wellingtons at the time which I'm told
> probably saved my life. My ears were ringing with tinnitus for weeks
> after that and I still have a long jagged scar on my right index
> finger where it literally split open like a banana skin.
>
> I don't trust Mrs Rob around electricity anymore.
>
Forgive me but I have to ask.  What is an electric strimmer?  :D

-- 
Running the rec.arts.TV Channels Watched Survey.
Winter 2016 survey began Dec 01 and will end Feb 28

On 1/20/2017 10:36 AM, Mr Rob wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>> I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>> tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>> juice but the PC survived.
>
> Haha!
>
>
> I don't think anybody can beat Mrs Rob for crazy things connected to
> electricity (not in a PC)
>
> Two that immediately spring to mind are:
>
> Plugging an extension lead into the wall - not to use it, but to 'cut
> it to length' for where she wanted it to reach. She tried to cut it
> with a serrated carving knife - whilst the lead was plugged in - and
> switched on at the wall. The bang was huge and her hair was actually
> smoldering and standing on end like a scene from a cartoon. She's very
> lucky to have escaped with just a single small but very deep and nasty
> burn in the crook of her elbow and a badly scorched scalp. The knife
> blade had a lump melted out of it and looked like it had been in a
> fire.
>
>
> Many years ago when we were first married, we bought an electric
> strimmer. Mrs Rob 'wired it up' but somehow managed to have two male
> pins exposed - which I picked up ready to plug into the female
> connector - and promptly got literally blasted off my feet. I was
> wearing rubber gardening wellingtons at the time which I'm told
> probably saved my life. My ears were ringing with tinnitus for weeks
> after that and I still have a long jagged scar on my right index
> finger where it literally split open like a banana skin.
>
> I don't trust Mrs Rob around electricity anymore.
>

I have a way with electronics, sometimes I just look at them and they 
start working.  The worst thing I've ever done was accidentally wipe a 
loved one's HD... without a backup.  I've done that twice with different 
people, one of the times I thought I was doing a backup...  the other 
time I was cleaning space off a full HD and wiped the wrong profile 
without realizing (stupid windows bug there were two for her.) Then 
installed something else, thereby wiping any chance of recovery. Both a 
very long time ago, I think I've learned that lesson.

The worst thing I've done with electricity was trim the power cord on 
the electric hedge trimmer this summer... I still can't get that outlet 
to work, but the hedge trimmer still does.

One of my friends opened up a malfunctioning CRT to troubleshoot and 
managed to create ball lightning while I was present.  Capacitors you know.

- Justisaur

Mr Rob <noemail...@jsjsaiiowppw.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
>wrote:
>
>>I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>>I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>>tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>>juice but the PC survived.
>
>Haha!
>
>
>I don't think anybody can beat Mrs Rob for crazy things connected to
>electricity (not in a PC)
>
>Two that immediately spring to mind are:
>
>Plugging an extension lead into the wall - not to use it, but to 'cut
>it to length' for where she wanted it to reach. She tried to cut it
>with a serrated carving knife - whilst the lead was plugged in - and
>switched on at the wall. The bang was huge and her hair was actually
>smoldering and standing on end like a scene from a cartoon. She's very
>lucky to have escaped with just a single small but very deep and nasty
>burn in the crook of her elbow and a badly scorched scalp. The knife
>blade had a lump melted out of it and looked like it had been in a
>fire.
>
>
>Many years ago when we were first married, we bought an electric
>strimmer. Mrs Rob 'wired it up' but somehow managed to have two male
>pins exposed - which I picked up ready to plug into the female
>connector - and promptly got literally blasted off my feet. I was
>wearing rubber gardening wellingtons at the time which I'm told
>probably saved my life. My ears were ringing with tinnitus for weeks
>after that and I still have a long jagged scar on my right index
>finger where it literally split open like a banana skin.
>
>I don't trust Mrs Rob around electricity anymore.

I have to ask;   Did you have the taste for games of deplorable quality
_before_ she electrocuted you, or did that come after?

You're lucky the pair of you are still alive.

Xocyll
-- 
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of 
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably, 
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So 
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr 

On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 18:27:22 -0500, Xocyll <Xoc...@gmx.com> wrote:

>I have to ask;   Did you have the taste for games of deplorable quality
>_before_ she electrocuted you, or did that come after?

That's actually a very good point!

The short answer is 'no'


I think I must have been permanently damaged more than I realised.



-- 
Rob

On 2017-01-20, Justisaur <just...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/20/2017 10:36 AM, Mr Rob wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>>> I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>>> tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>>> juice but the PC survived.
>>
>> Haha!
>>
>>
>>
>
> I have a way with electronics, sometimes I just look at them and they 
> start working.  The worst thing I've ever done was accidentally wipe a 
> loved one's HD... without a backup.  I've done that twice with different 
> people, one of the times I thought I was doing a backup...  the other 
> time I was cleaning space off a full HD and wiped the wrong profile 
> without realizing (stupid windows bug there were two for her.) Then 
> installed something else, thereby wiping any chance of recovery. Both a 
> very long time ago, I think I've learned that lesson.

I offered to help with someone's PC once and proceeded to delete their
entire email history with no backup. They were running some type of
MacOS and I selected their email icon and pressed enter, but
accidentally pressed delete and removed the icon. I ran out of time
and they could never work out how to get the icon back nor any of the
email within.

-- 
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> writes:

> Oh, if THAT'S the sort of stories you want... Did I ever tell you
> about the time I /snapped/ my motherboard trying to attach a heat-sink
> fan? Or how I learned about the Dangers of Static Electricity in, "Oh
> No, Now I Need a New Video Card!". And then there's the
> real-oldie-but-still-goodie "Wait, 3.5" Disks aren't Hard Disks?" ;-)

I haven't broken much stuff over the years but I actually managed to
break the power connector on a new SATA drive last year. I had no idea
they are so flimsy and the cable was a little stiff and I hadn't found
the mounting rails for my case so I couldn't put it in but wanted to
start copying stuff over anyways... 

So the drive was on the desk and the copying went fine but then I went
to put it into the drive cage with the cables connected. Quiet
snap. Drive junked.

Next time for sure I'm going to put the drive in the drive cage first
and then plug it in. Something to be said for the old Molex power
connectors.

On Fri, 20 Jan 2017 09:01:16 +0000, Toby Newman <goo...@asktoby.com>
wrote:

>On 2017-01-19, Mr Rob <noemail...@jsjsaiiowppw.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Jan 2017 09:04:58 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson 
>>>
>>>Oh, if THAT'S the sort of stories you want... Did I ever tell you
>>>about the time I /snapped/ my motherboard trying to attach a heat-sink
>>>fan? Or how I learned about the Dangers of Static Electricity in, "Oh
>>>No, Now I Need a New Video Card!". And then there's the
>>>real-oldie-but-still-goodie "Wait, 3.5" Disks aren't Hard Disks?" ;-)
>>
>> I've snapped a motherboard before as well. I had 3 corners attached to
>> mountings inside a case, the fourth mounting was missing. It was a
>> huge tower with a Pentium II "slocket" on an LX  chipset which was
>> really heavy. I could see through the butchered case that the corner
>> nearest the heavy CPU was bending away from the case when I stood it
>> on its end. But I thought it would be OK. Which it was for a few days
>> at least.
>>
>> Then it broke one night when I was sleeping. The PC didn't work
>> anymore after that for some reason.
>
>I was once working on my PC with the side off, the PC was on. I think
>I was investigating fan noise. At the same time I was eating cherry
>tomatoes and one exploded as I bit it. Somehow I was covered in tomato
>juice but the PC survived.

I went for years with a side off my PC boxes.  Easier that way.  I
never cared about how it looked.  My biggest problem has always been
to find all the fucking connections of wires from MB to stuff, so all
the blinken lights and noises were heard, properly, and could be
switched on and off by the bloody buttons.  I've had PCs running that
I knew for a fact didn't have all the proper connections plugged in
right - but basically I'm lazy and if the damn thing runs I have
enough trouble trying to read the help manuals for software I want to
use, and I figure if this infernal machine was supposed to save labor
cost it's doing a damn poor job.

My current machine was fairly easy.  I guess half of that is because
of experience and the other half is better technology.  The CPU cooler
is massive, but the fan isn't much and is totally silent.  Some of the
instructions were totally opaque, but youtube demos of "how to install
a  brand-X heat sink" etc were excellent.  There doesn't seem to be
anything that I can't find on youtube... "how to install an electrical
sub panel" kind of stuff, takes you right through it.  The box
advertises as "silent" but it's already silent so wtf?  I can't hear
the 1060 - in fact I can 't hear the PC at all.

I'm amazed by and I'm made totally ecstatically happy by 2016 computer
technology -  hardware and software and interactive.

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 19:29:18 -0800, unibalm <unibalm@csipga.zzzz>
wrote:

>I went for years with a side off my PC boxes.  Easier that way.  I
>never cared about how it looked.  

Leaving the case open isn't really an option when you live with small
creatures who like to poke at delicate electronics with a variety of
body-parts (and who aren't shy on the gratituous application of their
various bodily fluids either). Just the other day I was very grateful
that the case was on after a rather unexpected - and messy - "burp"
splattered the outside of the case with unmentionable goo; it's much
easier to clean off an aluminum panel than picking yick out from
between transitors ;-)