Case fan has been noisy and getting worse (two big fans in the case, one front, one back, it’s the front one that’s been going).  Bought a couple of new ones a while back, but found that I could get by, by tapping the fan and the bearings would settle down so I never actually put the new one in.

But the last few days the tapping has only fixed it for a few minutes, so I finally got around to replacing it tonight.

Not as easy as I’d hoped.  Had to remove the hard disk cage to get to the back of the fan mountings.  The existing fan was wired into an adapter plugged into one of the power cords, all of which was nicely cable-tied together by the folk who built the machine, with about 50 other cables.  So I had to cut the ties and then sort out all the hanging wires and remove the fan.  Lucky for me I bought a fan with a 3-pin to 4-pin converter, because I needed it.  Picked the quieter of the two I bought, and lined it up to screw it to the front of the case.

The screws are self tapping into the plastic, but they’re not easy to put in, and while putting the second one in my left hand slipped and I dragged my thumb over some sharp metal on the case.  Nice 1 inch long, 2mm deep gash on my thumb.  I didn’t get a photo, we dressed the wound pretty quick.  Nice big splodge of blood in the case, I think I got most of it.

I was tempted to check my blood sugar since there was so much spare blood hanging around.

Finally got the screws in and the case sounds nice and quiet.