snafup Posted April 10, 2013 Posted April 10, 2013 Hi, One of those days. Started hearing a ticking noise in my tower that sounded suspiciously like a bad fan with a bearing problem. It was a consistent background distraction during gaming that i was hearing but the spouse wasn't (isn't that the way it is?). It would change as rpms increased and decreased so i thought i was on the right track. I even got up close and personal and thought i had it tracked to my top case fan, as it seemed to change pitch if i shook the case a small amount. I decided today was the day to swap out the fan with a replacement i had just sitting around from an earlier build. Seemed easy ,just unscrew it from the top drop it out and pop in the new one right. I forget to take into account my cpu cooler ,a thermalright silver arrow,that takes up as much real estate on the motherboard as a small car. I didn't want to have to remove it so i ended up taking out the dvd burner and sliding it out the front bay, which in doing so enlightened me to the fact this was an antec 3 speed fan and the one i had to replace it was not. I like having the 3 speeds so i can ramp it up when it gets a little warm, so i gave up on my first swap and decided on taking an existing one that was in an easier accessible part of the case and swapping it out, as it was also a 3 speed. ( i put the top one in this slot hoping a new position would get rid of the tick). Figured it was a good time to do a spring cleaning on the case and got out the canned air and vacuum, took the fans off the cpu cooler and sucked away ,getting rid of a winters worth of dust. Put it back together and turn it back on. Voila the tick was worse. After saying a few choice words to myself and probably looking totally befuddled, i got on the floor, took off the side panels, and disconnected the top fans power.Nope not it.Did the same with the old one in the new position.Nada. Went looking on the open side hoping to see a stray wire or something. Instead the sound was clearer here. I started to reseat the cpu fans with a little wiggle when the one closest to the back changed pitch when i moved it, disappearing totally when i lifted it from the fins a few millimeters. After a wtf moment i took out a light and tried to see what was rubbing on the fins of the cooler. My dogs must have thought i was loosing it as i lay on the floor with a headlamp on ,trying to look into a 3 mm gap for a noise source cursing to my self over this "easy" fix. But you know what? I found the damn problem. It was a fan sticker that was coming off the fan. It was only apparent when the fan got up to speed and the corner started to lift. After removing the sticker,(it came off surprisingly easy), and the general clean up, the system sounds better than ever. Lessons learned: 1) disconnect the fan you think it is first, to see if the noise stops.:doh: 2) check for sticker shock 3) Clean case a little more often. Thanks for listening.
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