AMD Durons and fans

[luke10050]

hey, so i have this AMD duron with ddr/pc133 ram and it has this rediculously annoying coolermaster rifle bearing fan, is there any easy to refill the resivor in these or alternatively stop it from being so damn noisy? or does it even need the fan at all?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Use a drop of motor oil.

[luke10050]

it doesnt really have a hole in the back, can i drill it?

[ben7]

Replace the fan! The noise is from the bearing, (obviously) and when it is worn, it does that. All bearings make strange sounds when they are worn.

Replace it with a good brand fan, NMB, Delta, Panasonic, Nidec, just to name a few.

[luke10050]

now i have a good point to bring up, what can i use such an old pc for?

[Evil Lurker]

Hate to say it but I think its time to retire that dinosaur.

[goontron]

Originally Posted by Evil Lurker

Hate to say it but I think its time to retire that dinosaur.

no, it would work fine with linux if the duron is a morgan or an applebred, but most people are way too scared (at least from what i see at my work) to try linux, yea evil lurker is right if you want to run a microscam OS that will be supported next year, upgrade the hardware

[Heihachi_73]

Word processor, web server, Quake/Doom/other period-era FPSes/DOS games, freeware GTA1/GTA2... I can't think of much else to do with a Duron from 1999 or so, it's about as powerful as an Xbox 1 (or a four cylinder Commodore). Also, if it's PC133, it's most likely going to be plain old SDRAM rather than DDR.

Personally though, I'd retire it unless it has sentimental values or you collect PCs.

If it's a generic desktop tower case where the sides are separate pieces (e.g. not a one-piece shell like an old 486 AT case)...

Why not make a fire bin out of it:
1. Remove the sides.
2. Remove the internals - mainboard, drives, power supply, cables (PC speaker doesn't matter, if it has one). Keep the screws or board mounts if you need them.
3. Remove the front bezel, if not done already when you removed the sides.
4. Take off the top part (you might have to drill out the rivets if it has those instead of screws, or simply just break off the end that's riveted).
5. Screw both sides back on and you're set.

Of course, if you want carnage and a bit of black smoke, feel free to skip step 2 and leave everything intact. Being Australia though, in that we have Carbon Tax instead of Al Gore, "don't tell Julia Gillard".

[RJARRRPCGP]

Even those cheap chipset fans are possible to fix with a drop of motor oil!
The noise is probably from the original stuff getting depleted.

[Uranium-235]

is it noisy from high rpm or like another kind of sound. I knew some AMD HSF's just ran at high RPM

You can find a quieter heatsink, or a fan speed control knob. But the best thing to do would be to save your money and get something new. Intels HSF's with ivy bridge celerons are dead quiet

[momaka]

Originally Posted by luke10050

it doesnt really have a hole in the back, can i drill it?

Yes.
I've done this several times with sealed fans. The most recent one was a Sunon KD1208PTS1 sealed fan. It wasn't stuck but didn't spin as freely as it should. Since the back was sealed with a metal cap, I drilled two small holes near the shaft through the front of the fan (on the rotor, that is) and droped 6 to 7 drops of oil in there, making sure to get the oil on the shaft. After some spinning, pulling, and moving the rotor by hand in different directions, the oil must have gotten to the bearing because the fan was spinning much easier afterwards.

So yes, you can drill fans.
Remember, it's already broken so it doesn't hurt to try these things .

As far as the Duron, I suspect it's a Morgan core since it uses PC133 RAM. Probably not very useful, other than for testing software and/or using it as a torrent box.
If it was an Applebred, you could always try the L2 cache mods and all of that.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by momaka

Yes.
I've done this several times with sealed fans. The most recent one was a Sunon KD1208PTS1 sealed fan. It wasn't stuck but didn't spin as freely as it should. Since the back was sealed with a metal cap, I drilled two small holes near the shaft through the front of the fan (on the rotor, that is) and droped 6 to 7 drops of oil in there, making sure to get the oil on the shaft. After some spinning, pulling, and moving the rotor by hand in different directions, the oil must have gotten to the bearing because the fan was spinning much easier afterwards.

So yes, you can drill fans.
Remember, it's already broken so it doesn't hurt to try these things .

As far as the Duron, I suspect it's a Morgan core since it uses PC133 RAM. Probably not very useful, other than for testing software and/or using it as a torrent box.
If it was an Applebred, you could always try the L2 cache mods and all of that.

Actually, it looks like most, if not all socket 462 SDR boards support PC133, even when the usual FSB is only 100 Mhz. KT133 don't support 133 Mhz FSB but is fine with the RAM at 133 Mhz.
Only "KT133A" had proper support. Even full T-birds were often only 100 Mhz FSB.

I had a 1.3 Ghz 100 Mhz FSB variant, because of the board I had.

[larrymoencurly]

I once ran MemTest86 with a 1.6 GHz Applebred Duron (130nm) but forgot to plug in the heatsink fan for 20 minutes. It didn't reach even 70C because the BIOS was configured to shut down at that temperature. This was with the mobo outside the case, in a 25C room. So I think that CPU barely needed a fan, and you should be able to get away with a really slow one. My heatsink was about 3" x 2.5" x 2":

[momaka]

Originally Posted by larrymoencurly

I once ran MemTest86 with a 1.6 GHz Applebred Duron (130nm) but forgot to plug in the heatsink fan for 20 minutes. It didn't reach even 70C because the BIOS was configured to shut down at that temperature.

Interesting.
That CPU has a 48W/57W typical/maximum power dissipation. I'm surprised it stayed that cool.

I have a 1.4 GHz Applebred in a computer with a bigger heat sink than yours and a 80 mm fan going on full blast, but the CPU temp is usually in the 30-40C range (idle and under load respectively). Initially when I built that computer way back, the CPU fan was almost completely blocked and there was very little airflow. With that, the CPU temperatures never went above 52C under full load for hours. So I guess those CPUs aren't as power hungry as CPUWorld makes them appear.