Computer help - 2 hard drives with XP (updated)

[Billy's Little Trip]

Update part 3:
Success! Determination paid off. I was focusing in the wrong direction and got tunnel vision thinking the problem was my hard drive racing and using too much virtual memory, etc. Nope, it's my GeForce video card fan. Come to find out, it's integrated, so not a vid card?

So I start Googling for others with my unit and problem. Some fixed it with updating drivers for windows7, but that didn't work for me. Others added another fan, and this was my next move.

So I decide to look at my fan and heatsink in hand. First thing I notice on the heatsink is it looks pretty big and has 3 copper tubes running through it. So I'm guessing this must be a liquid cooled heatsink? Then looking at it more, it has a THICK dust in the fin, so I take off the fan from the heatsink and it is packed full! I'd say 80% obstructed.

So I blew it out with high pressure, clean the fan, got it back together and THAT DID IT! I put it through the worst test. Watching an embedded youtube vid, opened my MySpace page and opened a few forum threads and posted. The fan has not raced once since. I actually thought maybe I didn't hook it back up right because I can not hear it. So I put my ear to the vent and it is running. Just slow and REALLY quiet.

[JonPorobil]

Glad that worked!

Just a point of order there: The copper tubing is probably not carrying liquid - water cooling is still a designer-type option that you have to go out of your way to get if you want it. More likely they're just just solid copper. Often all the heat sink actually needs to do is get itself hot so that the actual component doesn't.

[Billy's Little Trip]

I said liquid cooled. I've seen some of the fancy water cooled that almost look like a mini radiator in a car. I'll look it up and find a picture. This one has very obvious pinched and soldered ends on the copper tubing just like a refrigeration system, which indicates "to me" that it is containing something. Maybe freon? But freon is pumped with high pressure through a system. I'm curios not.


Oh, and I've been surfing the webz, youtubing, load Super Bowl pics, worked a bit on a song, and the fan has not made a peep. It's f**kin' crazy that it took me this long to figure it out and it was so damn simple.

[JonPorobil]

Well, when you mentioned that you were running Windows 7 with only 1MB or RAM, all of our alarms went off. Then you mentioned that the hard drive was the source of the noise, and we all extrapolated from that data.

Of course, periodically cracking open the case to dust off is rarely a bad idea. Lesson learned.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Hopefully I taught you a lesson that you can pass on to your children someday. Never assume the customer has a clue.

[JonPorobil]

Oh yes, and I deal with some pretty clueless customers daily at my job. Here's an actual exchange:

ME: "There's a table that the software uses to determine what services are available, and that table has expired. Would it be alright with you if I tried to remote into your computer, which would allow me to see your screen and borrow control?"

CUSTOMER: "I'm pretty good with computers. If you just walk me through it, I could fix it myself."

ME: "Okay then. I'll need you to open up a Windows Explorer window and go to your primary hard drive."

CUSTOMER: "Okay."

ME: "There will be a folder there called 'Documents and Settings.' Go to that folder, and then double-click on 'All Users.'

CUSTOMER: "Alright... so you want me to go to fedex.com?"

ME [after a brief stunned silence]: "No sir, and I'm sorry about the miscommunication. There's a program that lets you view and manipulate the contents of your computer, and it's called Windows Explorer."

CUSTOMER: "I don't know what that is."


It would have been so easy for me to get fired over that innocuous phone call over one tiny little issue.

[Billy's Little Trip]

LOL. Where the heck did he get Fed-Ex.com from?

[Billy's Little Trip]

Jon, you better sit down for this.

I just researched it. I knew there was a reason why the copper tubes were pinched and soldered on the ends. They are in a vacuum state and a liquid/gas is inside the tubes. So I get a free pass for calling it liquid cooled.

"The fluid actually exists within the vessel as a wet saturated vapour and when heat is applied to any point along the external surface, evaporation of the fluid occours at this point within the Heat-pipe and then condenses again at any other internal point which is at a fractionally lower temperature"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe#Heat_transfer

http://www.heat-pipes.co.uk/index.php?sectionid=4

[JonPorobil]

LOL. Where the heck did he get Fed-Ex.com from?

BECAUSE HE'S STUPID.

Also, should you ever need to call Fedex technical support, a few pearls of wisdom that should make the experience slightly less frustrating for everyone involved:

Fedex does not have a hyphen.
Fedex has two e's. Many people spell it FedX. They are wrong.
Fedex is not short for "Federal Express" and has not been since 2000, when the name officially changed. No remaining services are branded with the original name.



Now... The liquid-cooling system surprises me. Usually if you want liquid coolant, you need to specifically ask for it. Is it attached to your motherboard, or to a particular component on it?

[Billy's Little Trip]

I'm pretty sure the cooling tube heatsink is pretty standard and not referred to as liquid cooled, I was just trying to be part right, lol. My fan and heatsink are on the motherboard.

My Nvidia GeForce vid card is an integrated GPU, so it's kind of entry level and came with the computer. It works fine for everything I do. I'm not a gamer.