[Hidden-tech] Anyone in the area have equipment for measuring PCnoise levels?

[Michael McIntosh]

> The noise could be caused by a bad cooling fan bearing.  I had a Dell laptop
> that went through no less than three of these fans over seven years.  Each
> failure was predicated by a great deal of noise, then the machine would get
> hot and start acting funny.  The good news is that the cooling assembly was
> cheap ($30) and easy (for me) to replace.  You may want to explore getting a
> replacement part from Sony, if you were planning on  ditching your laptop
> just because of the noise.

After lurking on on Vaio discussion forums I developed the impression 
that the amount of noise is normal for this particular model. (I wonder 
if anyone else in HT has a Sony Vaio PCG-K25 and whether it is as load 
as mine) I'd normally suspect it was a ball-bearing issue with the fan, 
but its been like this since the first day I started using it, brand new.

That said, thanks for the reply. :) I'll look at revisiting this issue 
since it was a while ago that I investigated this. Its certainly cheaper 
to investigate and replace the fan. (although a plan is still in the 
works to get a dedicated desktop machine)

I still plan on using the laptop, but just when I am traveling or 
working outside of my home. Anytime I work outside my home, the ambient 
noise level of where I am at usually drowns out the noise anyways. :) 
Thanks!

-Michael