Classic British Flight Sim

I think my PC is on its last legs.

IT starts up and runs OK but once it gets under a significant load (like running FSX) an awful squealing noise starts up from the main case and performance takes a nosedive (frame rate down from 30 to maybe TWO)

It sounds like a fan rattling round in its bearings, but I took the side off the case and (momentarily) stopped each fan (CPU cooler, one on the side of case and two on graphics card) but the noise continued.

If I restart PC it does not go away, but if I shut it down completely and restart after a minute or more it is quiet for a while.

Being retired and living on a pension I just can't afford a new FS spec PC; I may be able to continue flying some aircraft on my laptop but if I can't get this issue fixed my Stratocruiser and Concorde days will be over (can't find a crying "smiley")

1. Have you missed checking a fan somewhere, there is usually one in the front of the case to pull air in and also one hidden inside the PSU (power supply unit)?
2. When the noise occurs can you tell if it is coming from the drive bay area if you still have IDE or SATA mechanical drives rather than SSD drives?

What you describe does sound like a bearing starting to fail and the only things that have bearings are fans and drives.

Good luck finding the issue.

SSD, no fan on front (big one on side of case)

Hard to check the PSU as it has to be all switched off to get at that but I loosened it the other day and gave it a clean.

It's been behaving itself so far today

At this time of year, you can get dampness in the bearings in fans and this can make them squeal, awful sound. If it didn’t stop when you stopped the cpu fan spinning, I’d be inclined to agree that its the PSU fan.

I hope you manage to fix the problem.

One option for replacement, in worst case, could be a refurb PC from the likes of Morgancomputers.com as a base to build a sim machine up from.

At the moment they are offering a "Lenovo THINKCENTRE M900 Mini Tower PC Intel Core I7-6700 Quad Core Up To 4.00ghz Processor 16GB Ram 512GB SSD DVDRW 1GB Graphics Windows 10 Professional" , (punctuation optional extra) for £200. You might be able to re-use your existing video card.

adysmith wrote: ↑

26 Nov 2023, 18:00

SSD, no fan on front (big one on side of case)

Hard to check the PSU as it has to be all switched off to get at that but I loosened it the other day and gave it a clean.

It's been behaving itself so far today

Hi Adrian,
You can stop the PSU fan by inserting, say, a bamboo skewer, or a toothpick through the air holes/slots, but I have a feeling it's not the PSU.

For your unit to be slowing down due to overheating, I would look closely at the CPU cooling, it may be clogged with fluff. You could use one of those hand operated balloon pumps to blow it clear. Compressed air or mouth blowing not recommended due to moisture. Brushing can cause static which can do harm.
There is downloadable freeware that will report on temperatures of various parts of your computer. I'll post a link in an edit. Back soon. Do this anyway, it's always good to know what's going on inside
EDIT: here's a link, try "CORE TEMP" https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/how ... emperature
btw, there IS a crying smiley in line 2 ->

Well I've established that the CPU is getting HOT

"Core Temp" (other temp monitors are available) reports four cores sitting at about 40C at rest; run FSX and they all rapidly rise to 100C (reported max permissible for the Intel Core i5 4690K is 105) and stay very close to that, so I guess it is shedding load from that point hence drop in performance.

First stop will be some new CPU paste, I've had this PC for many years now (you can tell because it is Win7 and FSX)

CPU paste does dry out over time as I found out once. I had a box that would shut down completely after about 5 minutes of run time, basically just idling. I pulled the CPU fan and heat sink, thoroughly cleaned both and the mating surfaces between the heatsink and CPU then re-applied fresh thermal paste. That box ran for many years after that and may even be the one I currently have in my music making area to play tunes and lesson material.

adysmith wrote: ↑

28 Nov 2023, 18:51

Well I've established that the CPU is getting HOT
.....
First stop will be some new CPU paste, I've had this PC for many years now (you can tell because it is Win7 and FSX)

Hi Adrian,
Don't forget ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL to clean the CPU and heat sink, otherwise the new paste won't be properly effective.
Good luck, sir.

At the moment they are offering a "Lenovo THINKCENTRE M900 Mini Tower PC Intel Core I7-6700 Quad Core Up To 4.00ghz Processor 16GB Ram 512GB SSD DVDRW 1GB Graphics Windows 10 Professional"

I had a look at that one, it says it has "Slots PCI Express x1 (Gen 3.x) x 1, PCI Express x16 (Gen 3.x) x 2"

My Nvidia GTX980 wants "PCI Express 3.0 ×16"

To my uneducated mind it looks like it would fit, but Morgan Computers (I phoned them) say it wont?