I'm running Knoppix on a Shuttle ST62KS "Zen", and it's always proven to be a very nice quiet little box, but last night it started making a not terribly loud but rather annoying buzzing noise.

The box has a single, speed-controlled fan that provides both case ventilation and airflow through the CPU heatsink. Since I've got a PVR-350 the CPU is virtuallyidle, so the fan rarely runs.

When I heard the buzzing noise last night, I thought the fan must be failing, but when I took the cover off, I could see that the fan wasn't running (as usual). The only other moving part in the box is the 200GB Samsung SpinPoint hard drive -- which has always been vitrually inaudible (even with the cover off). The drive was too hot to hold a finger on, and smartctl reported a drive temp of 56C. After 10 minutes or so with the cover off, the drive dropped to 40C and the noise went away. I ordered the drive to do offline tests, and it reported no problems, but this morning the noise was back (cover still off, drive temp till 40C).

I'm afraid that the drive bearings have been cooked, and I'm headed for a failure.

Has anybody else had a Samsung drive get suddently noisy?

I probably should figure out a way to keep the fan spinning at some minimum speed to keep air moving through the chassis even when the CPU is idle and cool.

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Grant

Do a backup quick! just incase

You'll probably be fine with the fan running a little bit all the time, just see if the frequency of the buzzing noise increases.

LIke I've got somewhere to backup 150GB of recordings.

It would be nice if you could configure a minimum speed for the fan, but AFAICT, you can only set it for one of three fixed speeds or for "auto". If I set it to low, and the CPU does heat up (e.g. when watching videos with mplayer/xine), it won't speed up when the CPU gets hot.

The part that's really a pain is I've got to lug a tube into the living room so I can do BIOS stuff.

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Grant

HD failures (or even potential failures) are not something to hesitate about. Start shopping for the replacement part now. A spare drive is a useful thing to have around anyway (even though there's no room for it in the Zen case).

MicroCenter around the corner from my office has them for $99.

Using the old screwdriver-stethoscope trick, I figured out it was the fan that was making the noise. But, it only makes it when it's _not_ turning (but it's supposed to be spinning at low speed). If I give a fan-blade a nudge while it's making the noise, the fan will start to spin at low speed (and the noise stops).

The fan seems to run fine at high speed, but is stalling at low speed. I'm not sure if it's a fan problem or a motherboard problem. It appears that shuttle has had problems in the past with fan speed control transistors that were too wimpy, so I'm afraid that's the issue.

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Grant

Replacement fans are even cheaper.. My current KnoppMyth box is on it's second 120mm case fan after the first one started making buzzing noises. Total cost <$20...

Oh, I know. I've replaced at least a half-dozen of them in the past couple years. I'd gladly pay for a quality fan, but all I can find locally are junk. Some are clear and come with multi-colored LEDs, for people who want to spend more and still get junk. There are even some really expensive cast aluminum ones that have especially bad perfrormance and noise numbers.

I'll have to start shopping for an extra thin, low-noise 80mm fan -- just in case it is the fan that's failing and not the drive electronics. Or I could bolt a normal size 80mm on on the outside of the case. Not sure if the machine has enough rearward clearance for that, though.

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Grant

I ended up with one of the Antec 3 speed ones, not perfect or absolute best of breed, but good enough and easy to find. Even SilentPCReview http://www.silentpcreview.com/ says they're OK, and they're a fairly obsessive bunch.

I've had bad luck with my Samsung Spinpoint drives. I have four of them that failed -- 100% failure rate. Every one started making bearing noise during normal operation and progressed to total failure. Maybe you'll have better luck -- mine were all 40G models I bought about two years ago.

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