Volcano 5 Howling

[Etruscan]

I have had a Thermaltake Volcano 5 HSF on a Duron 900 for about 18 months or so. I turned it on today and it started making a terrible racket (it never was all that quiet). A visual inspection reveals that the bearing seems to be turning all right, and the sink is relatively clean as well as the fan housing. The fan appears to be turning ok (no wobble). In short everything looks ok, but there is still a noise.

Before I go out and purchase a replacement, I was wondering if taking the HSF off the CPU and reseating it might quiet it down? The reason I'm asking is I'm kind of lazy, but I'm short of Artic Silver too. Don't want ot waste any. Anyone tried reseating a noisy fan?

[originel]

i've never messed with resetting a noisy hsf before...but i don't see why it would help. my guess is that there is prolly some dust or something on the bearings. if it's howling it's definitely something in the fan motor, so i wouldn't reset it (especiialy if you're short on AS3).

if you have an extra 80mm fan lying around you can try installing that on it . i believe that the older vocanoes used standard, detachable fans just like the newer ones do as well. that will fix it, although it might not cool as well depending on what fan you currently have on it.

[ragtop]

Although fans will sometimes run a long time after they start making noise, in most cases, the noise is a sign of impending death. Unless your MB has CPU temp or fan speed protection, I would be very careful with it until you get a new fan.

[Etruscan]

Thanks for the suggestions fellas, but guess what? I unplugged the HSF and the machine was still howling. No wonder it seemed all right. It turns out the noise was coming from a case fan on the front. It just seemed like it was the Volcano. So, problem solved. One new case fan.

Your right, by the way, originel. There doesn't seem to be any reason that reseating it would stop the noise. I kind of vaguely thought maybe the sink was vibrating or something, but that doesn't make much sense if the thing is strapped on like it is supposed to be. Which it is.