Life of a Sysadmin

The occassional trials and tribulations of a jack of all tr ades sysadmin in a startup in Silicon Valley

archives

October 2008 (2)
September 2008 (3)
June 2008 (1)
April 2008 (1)
March 2008 (6)
December 2007 (6)
October 2007 (1)
September 2007 (1)
August 2007 (2)
July 2007 (1)
June 2007 (5)
May 2007 (5)
April 2007 (3)
March 2007 (7)
February 2007 (2)
January 2007 (3)
December 2006 (4)
November 2006 (3)
October 2006 (3)
August 2006 (3)
July 2006 (1)
June 2006 (2)
May 2006 (4)
April 2006 (2)
March 2006 (5)
February 2006 (5)
January 2006 (7)
December 2005 (2)
November 2005 (6)
October 2005 (4)
September 2005 (4)
August 2005 (1)
July 2005 (2)
June 2005 (3)
May 2005 (4)
April 2005 (1)
March 2005 (2)

November 2006

A Failed CPU Cooler Fan, or heatsinks on modern processors get hot

I received a report that a machine was powering off erratically. After interrogating the user who made the report, I was reasonably sure that the problem was a matter of an overheating processor. Upon opening the case and powering the machine back on, the cpu fan was indeed malfunctioning. It tried desperatly to spin up, but could never quite work out a full rotation. Prodding provided the final bit of needing information; the bearing had fallen out of alignment.

I still felt the need to double check that the cpu was actually overheating. Instead of doing something sensible like booting into the bios menu and looking at the hardware monitor to see the temperature, I touched the heatsink. Ow.