Deth

In this day, an age, the fact that I’m still using my old Antec P182 case is surprising to me. Originally, I had a setup built around the intel q6600 in it and used that for something like ten years. You know how it is these days. Things don’t typically last longer than one day after the warranty is up.

That old system seemed to be becoming a bit unstable when the Ryzen’s came out. They were cheap enough, I figured I’d be better off upgrading the core components rather than try to memory then a new video card and maybe motherboard. The Ryzen was such a major upgrade, too, so it made it worthwhile. I made this system more future-proof from the start by going overboard with the RAM. On the old one, I figured I’d upgrade later and never did, yet IR regretted not having more than the 4gb from the start. The old one also had a messed up latch for the heat sink on the motherboard. That chip always ran hot because of the poor heat sink connection.

I fully expect this build to last me for years to come.

The one thing I kept from the old system is the case. I really like the P182, and it still seems very solid after these fifteen years. With the Ryzen, it runs cool.

This afternoon I was surfing the web when I started hearing a grinding noise coming from the computer case. I assumed it was a fan taking a shit. It sounded like bearings going bad. I didn’t know whether it was the case fan or the CPU fan, so I shut it down immediately. Because I wanted to prevent any damage, I didn’t even think to check the CPU temperature. I disconnected everything and took it downstairs on the dining room table with good light, and we opened up to take a look at the fans.

The first thing we noticed was it was dusty, so we cleaned that up, The upper fan was not spinning. It was only at most trying to spin by, maybe would get one rotation. I hit the power, then we disconnected it. It made the grinding sound again, but a little more inconsistently, so we disconnected the front fan since it sounded like that’s where the sound was coming from. Sure enough, that stopped the noise.

The CPU temperature seems fine without those fans, but it’s cool so that helps. I have one of the fans here next to me, so I can search for replacements for those plus the one that’s still running. In my opinion, I think it’s safe to assume that of two out of three died, the last one’s time is ticking away. I mean, they have moving parts and moving parts fail eventually due to wear and tear. I don’t know what fans are good these days, since I haven’t looked at all, but I want to get something reliable and get them installed before it warms up.