Having experienced what I call the “black death” (for windows, you have the “blue screen of death”) of my computing gear early this year, I am not going to gamble the second time around and decided to buy a cooling pad. After scouring the net for user reviews and seeing all available cooling pads in the market, I’ve settled for the cooling pad made by Belkin. It was a bit pricey but I was totally sold with the clear-cut design. Unfortunately, I stumbled upon a knockoff a third of the price I paid for grrrrrrr! Where else?... At CD-R King.
Anyway, I learned to appreciate the use of cooling fans as they really serve their purpose. From a “bottom enclosure” temperature of 33 degree Celsius and above, it was able to lower the temperature and maintained at a range of 30 to 32 degree Celsius. The change doesn’t look drastic but I learned to appreciate the Celsius scale again as one degree Celsius is not a puny number.
I’m a power user and after a month of using my cooling pad, I noticed an annoying noise emanating from the cooling fan. The noise however only occurs upon switching the fan lasting for about a few minutes. At first I thought it was normal and the fan might not be receiving enough supply current since I attached it to a very cheap USB hub (which I bought at CD-R King… already learned my lesson this time and worthy of another story by the way). Then the situation switched from bearable to really annoying. I thought of sending it back to the shop where I bought it but that would be futile for it’s been a month that passed. I thought of also replacing the fan myself as the pad only has a few screws, it wouldn’t be a big problem. I realized that my unit is new and it should not be the case. These days where people must reduce contributing waste, especially electronic devices, replacing the cooling fan was my last resort.
Luckily today, most questions can be answered by typing a phrase or sentence on Google. “How to repair a noisy cooling fan” lead me to ZD Net UK (http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,1000001161,2135514-20039487o,00.htm) with the how-to guide here complete with pictures (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,2135514,00.htm). It totally solved my problem with just a mere drop of oil!!!
I remember I had this problem before with my first personal computer back in ’94. Google wasn’t around that time and not too many tech-perts to talk to. Come to think of it, my old PC still works back home!
Thanks Google! Thanks ZD Net! A drop of oil goes a long way…
