PC fixed (hopefully)

On Sunday evening my PC broke. I have been getting error messages about the CPU fan not working every time I switch the PC on for the last month or so, but the fan was actually working and the PC also worked alright. But on Sunday I came back from a walk and my bedroom (where the PC is) was smelling a bit funny, it had that 'something isn't quite right with some electronics' smell. However, the actual PC didn't seem particularly smelly, so I carried on working until the PC shut down unexpectedly.

I knew it must be the failing fan causing the CPU to overheat, so I went down in the garage to find the stock CPU fan (I had bought an Arctic Freezer 7 fan when I built the PC, and never installed the stock fan that came with the processor). Unfortunately, despite searching in many boxes, I couldn't find the fan, so I had to order a replacement and then wait a few days for delivery. It seems that Amazon only shipped it out on Tuesday (that's when they sent the dispatch email), but I paid for 1^st class postage, and so received it today (Wednesday).

Annoyingly, this problem happened just at the time that Mauser went on holiday, otherwise he would have been able to get me a fan from work on Monday.

While I was without PC I polished my desk, moved my desk around, and worked on some articles for my photo tips website. I watched Ben play on Portal 2 and made / decorated a cake with him as well.

I spent this afternoon uninstalling the old fan and installing the new fan on my PC. The new fan is an Arctic Freezer 7 Rev. 2, so an updated version of the old fan. I was hoping it might run cooler than the old fan, but it seems to be the same - as I write this the case temperature sensor is showing 32°C, the CPU will be running quite a bit hotter than that. Room temperature is quite cool at the moment.

In the evening I didn't think there would be a sunset, but actually there was a really nice one. Thankfully I did manage to catch some of it. Possibly I missed the best, but I don't know. Certainly it would have been better if I'd been out earlier in time to get my tripod and camera set up without having to rush as the light faded.

Also in the evening I watched Ben complete Portal 2, and sorted some old photos, just geocoding them and moving them from one nearly full drive to a different drive with more space. My PC was taking ages to start due to failing Windows Updates, so I had to install the updates separately, which took a while. I also managed to crash my PC by changing the output socket on my soundcard that the speakers were plugged into (the one they were plugged into wasn't working - the card has 3 unlabelled output sockets for surround sound and I am using stereo speakers). Not sure how that could make the PC crash, but it did.