Zalman 9500 LED cooler making an annoying chirping noise

[RostokMcSpoons]

... is there anything I can do?

It goes in cycles

10 seconds of silence then...

squeak ... squeak ... squ-EEK .. squ-EEK . SQUEEK . squ-EEK .. squ-EEK

welll, you get the picture. It sounds like an unfit gerbil running on a slightly rusty wheel, or a distant dawn chorus. It's too quiet to record, but too noisy to ignore

It's too old to RMA but too expensive to throw away (unless I have to). Could I take it off the motherboard and spray it with silicone lube (it's very light stuff for airsoft guns, not WD40), or would that kill it?



edit: just occurred to me that I've got the stock fan still in it's box sitting on my bookshelves... how much noisier and hotter will it run than the 9500?

 

[Darryl_1983]

Its probably just the bearings in the fan that have gone. Throw the stock fan on and it should be fine. I would imagine the stock fan would cool fairly well. What fan is on at current?

 

[RostokMcSpoons]

Its probably just the bearings in the fan that have gone. Throw the stock fan on and it should be fine. I would imagine the stock fan would cool fairly well. What fan is on at current?

Damn, I don't want to throw away a £35 fan

Well, I've sent an email to Zalman, maybe they'll take pity on me :/

As I'm running overclocked, I've got the FanMate set to 'max' so it's running 100% the whole time. Because I've got nearly 1.5v running in, the temps are quite high - it's either 70c or 80c in Orthos (can't remember which).
So I'm guessing the stock fan would raise temps to an unacceptable level unless I cut my overclock

I'm going to buy some duster gas tonight and give it a good blast with that... just in case.




edit: well <touch wood> it's ok I took the side panel off, gave the fan a bit of a poke and a prod, gave it a really good blast of duster gas (though it wasn't very dusty) and ... silence is golden It's so much nicer I had to check it was still running