Fan has gotten louder

Pretty much overnight my Windows machine that I built a year or two ago was a little louder. Not real loud to cause great concern, but I do want to get to the bottom of it because it was running nice and quiet for a long time before that. I have checked all fans and used compressed air to blow out any dust. The problem is I can't pinpoint where the fan that is making the noise is coming from. I think it is either the CPU fan or the power supply fan, but it is very hard to tell which. Anyone have any suggestions on how to pinpoint which fan has gotten louder suddenly?

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mog27 wrote:

Anyone have any suggestions on how to pinpoint which fan has gotten louder suddenly?

- Place your head as closely to either the cpu or psu

- You could take out the CPU fan, and thus the CPU itself, and turn it on.

Free Range

You can pin point where the noise is coming from by listening with a screwdriver or something similar. Hold one end on a static part of fan case, then press your ear on to other end. An old engineers trick for finding noisy bearings etc. Just be carefull.

RussS

Thats always a good trick Free Range - and yes you do have to be careful. I was working on an old vinatge F1 machine with a friend and was trying to find a knock - happened to short a HT lead with the probe I was using and boy did I get a belt

mog27

It was the little fan on my video card.