Noisy PC

[The Mad Monk]

I have a Novatech PC, some 4/5? years old. It used to be that when I first turned it on, for the first few seconds there was a noise like a fan, or disc drive? starting up, the the thing would be silent. It now has this noise cutting in from time to time, just for a few seconds, then it is silent again for a few minutes.

It doesn't get a lot of hard use, just normal domestic stuff. Emails, access some accounts, bit of Googling. It has a quiet life, really.

Any ideas, please?

Edit.
It was bought in December 2014.

Edited by The Mad Monk on Thursday 28th July 06:18

[RedWhiteMonkey]

I guess it'll be one of the fans reacting to temperatures. Open it up and try removing any built up dust.

[M11rph]

See above! I'm a slow typer...
Have you given the case/filters a clean recently?

Dust build up can choke the filters causing the fans to run more yhan would otherwise be needed.

Too often PCs get tucked out of sight or on carpets and are choked with fluff! Really needs doing every few months.

If you are cleaning it then start it up and see if you can identify the source of the noise. Something like a case fan is really cheap and easy to fix.

[Griffith4ever]

Sounds to me like a fan bearing has failed.

Remove the case side (if it's a tower) , get down on the floor and listen for which one it is. Cheap and easy to replace.

[dapprman]

The above two beat me to it. I would suggest first looking to see how much dust is in the grills covering the fans - if there's not enough airflow then the fan will be needed more often, particularly in this heat.
It could also be a fan bearing, but try the cleaning step first. Also it could be the fan in the power supply. Note if a bearing is going it will just get noisier and noisier over time.

[stevoknevo]

Probably needs the the thermal paste between the processor and heatsink cleaned off and reapplied in addition to all of the above, it'll have dried out and gone crusty long ago - easy to do and the thermal paste is only a couple of quid or so, plenty of howto's on YouTube.

[mikef]

Does it have a DVD, BD or CD optical drive? It could be that spinning up. And you really don’t need one in 2022, just unplug it

[The Mad Monk]

mikef said:

Does it have a DVD, BD or CD optical drive? It could be that spinning up. And you really don’t need one in 2022, just unplug it

Er, no, I don't think so. It has a SSD.

Can you tell I am not technical?

After a spell this morning when the fan/disc whatever seemed to go mad, the router packed up. C Cleaner said 'you seem to have a problem'. Eventually got it connected to the internet again, and now, touch wood, it seems to be behaving.

Thank you for the various bits of advice. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

[Funk]

As others have said, it sounds like a fan potentially with a duff bearing. BTW, at boot the fans will most likely all default to 'flat out' then quieten down as the machine boots into Windows which is why you notice it most at startup.

I see you're in the south east although you don't say exactly where. If you're anywhere near W.Sussex coast I'd be happy to take a look at it for you one weekend - send me an email through my profile if so. Can also replace any noisy fans and I have a neat PC air duster that'll clear out all the nooks and crannies.

I run a PC stuffed with eLoop Noiseblockers and a Noctua NH-D15 cpu cooler and the thing's nearly completely silent.

P.S. The router and CCleaner events are unrelated. Also, personally I would suggest you get rid of CCleaner; it's not needed and usually does more harm than good.

Edited by Funk on Friday 29th July 21:46

[The Mad Monk]

Funk said:

As others have said, it sounds like a fan potentially with a duff bearing. BTW, at boot the fans will most likely all default to 'flat out' then quieten down as the machine boots into Windows which is why you notice it most at startup.

I see you're in the south east although you don't say exactly where. If you're anywhere near W.Sussex coast I'd be happy to take a look at it for you one weekend - send me an email through my profile if so. Can also replace any noisy fans and I have a neat PC air duster that'll clear out all the nooks and crannies.

I run a PC stuffed with eLoop Noiseblockers and a Noctua NH-D15 cpu cooler and the thing's nearly completely silent.

Thank you. As I say, it seems to be behaving itself at the moment, I am in Surrey, just inside the M25.

Let's see how it goes..

[Funk]

The Mad Monk said:

Funk said:

As others have said, it sounds like a fan potentially with a duff bearing. BTW, at boot the fans will most likely all default to 'flat out' then quieten down as the machine boots into Windows which is why you notice it most at startup.

I see you're in the south east although you don't say exactly where. If you're anywhere near W.Sussex coast I'd be happy to take a look at it for you one weekend - send me an email through my profile if so. Can also replace any noisy fans and I have a neat PC air duster that'll clear out all the nooks and crannies.

I run a PC stuffed with eLoop Noiseblockers and a Noctua NH-D15 cpu cooler and the thing's nearly completely silent.

Thank you. As I say, it seems to be behaving itself at the moment, I am in Surrey, just inside the M25.

Let's see how it goes..

[skedaddle]

When the fan goes into hyper drive next time, check if there's a process running that is using lots of processing power. This can be done using the Windows Task Manager.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-windows-10-...

By design the fan will come on and make a lot of noise (depending on fan type) if the system is being stressed. This happens to my system when I am working on large video files. It's quite possible that in the past there was nothing running on your system that would load the system sufficiently for the fan to go into hyper drive but now there is some process that is causing this.