Quote:
Originally Posted by
sbuxman
Here's the shot of the inside of my dinosaur's case...
That big fan at the bottom is sitting on top of an aluminum heatsink which is sitting on top of the CPU (Central Processing Unit). The fan and heatsink often come as a single assembled unit and fasten down over the CPU.
I see a Seagate SATA hard drive on bottom left and an IDE CD/DVD drive top left. (Note that you could temporarily eliminate these two drives as the source of the noise problem by disconnecting their power leads and flipping the machine on. The only two spinning objects left would be the CPU and PSU [power supply unit] fans).
And last but not least is, up at the top right, an *infamous "Bestec" brand PSU (Power Supply Unit).
I say 'infamous' because I've had a lot of hair-pulling, teeth-knashing experience with Bestec PSUs. (And I am not the only one). In all but one instance there was no warning whatsoever before they fail. User comes in in the morning, pushes the power button and ... nothing. No lights, no noise, no nothing.
The biggest problem though is that more often than not, not only does the Bestec PSU die, it takes out the motherboard with it. <-grrr->
In one case, two people were sitting and talking, heard a "real loud buzzing" noise coming from the computer, smelled smoke and scrambled under the desk to yank the plug. And yep, you guessed it, dead Bestec PSU and motherboard.
This is not always the case however. There are still a couple of older XP machines around at the office with Bestec PSUs. I worry a bit about 'em of course. (Don't want a fire). But, they're old and not worth sinking any more money into 'em. When they die, they go in the trash.
