Acer Desktop PC - Is My Fan Failing?

[woodbine]

Re. Acer Aspire Desktop PC T120E

For the last 2 weeks, I have detected that my pc was making a slightly different noise from usual. Not really much louder, but different.

Yesterday, my pc had been on approx 3 hours, when it started making a loud noise like an engine/whirring. Turned it off and left it for 20 mins. It was ok when I turned on again, just back to the slightly different noise as before.

To my computer novice ears, I think it may be the fan. Does this sound the most likely cause?

Is replacement DIYable? (my experience of internals is only adding more DDR memory) Do I need a soldering iron? If its the fan, where do I get one from?

Many thanks.

 

[Diyisfun]

Do you have good airflow?
Have a look at the fan, it may be full of dust etc, you can then see whats involved in replacing it.

 

[opps]

open it up and run it.

If it is dusty, turn it off and dust it out/vacuum/use a tin of compressed air. It might just be dust build up on the fan

you will have a min of two fans, one on the processor and one in the psu (power supply unit)

If it is the later you will need to replace the whole unit, if the former then you just need to replace the fan. I have seen loads of psus fail but rarely because of the fan.

In the former, the fan sits over the heat sink- do not remove the heat sink- if you do you MUST apply thermal paste otherwise you will blow the processor. Replacement cost £10 to £20.

You will need to find out which processor you have- either use the crap acer site or download the free SIW.EXE from

http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html

before you can get a replacement- I recommend that you pop into your local independent pc store or email a web retailer as fans do vary in quality/noise