Do you only miss something after it's gone?

Like a high pitched whine, interspersed with vibration from your computer?

For the last couple of months the PC has been groaning for the first 5 mins after starting. It's also been whining (from a fan) loud enough to hear upstairs when the livingroom door was left open. Recentlyit would suddenly start vibrating so badly the whole case buzzed in sympathy until given a good 'thump' at the front.



I was convinced it was the power supply fan. So much so that I brought a spare home from work to swap out as a test. Turned out to be the cooling fan for the graphics card. I'd NEVER have thought such a tiny fan could make so much noise! This is just a total racket!!

So I've done a temp fix. Pulled the card, removed the fan unit and absolutely saturated the thing with a PTFE base lube spray. In another couple of weeks it'll start again, but at least I can get a decent alternative in by then I need to do a full OS rebuild soon anyway, and was going to pop in a 160Gb drive. I can therefore do the whole lot in one go, and maybe also replace the processor fan, which has always been a little noisy. This PC used to be totally silent when it was only Duron 900. I rather miss that.