Very noisy fans

Our PowerMac G5 1.8 Ghz got noisier and noisier with fan noise and I was wondering if that was normal or if it indicates a problem. It has been turned off since we bought the MacBook Pro but it would be nice if we could still have the PowerMac G5 working as we do have some uses for it.

mmoy said:

Our PowerMac G5 1.8 Ghz got noisier and noisier with fan noise and I was wondering if that was normal or if it indicates a problem. It has been turned off since we bought the MacBook Pro but it would be nice if we could still have the PowerMac G5 working as we do have some uses for it.

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As the fans age, the bearings inside of them will begin to wear and make noise. One of the things you can do is to spray them with some compressed air to dislodge the dust that has accumulated on the blades. In some cases, it will correct imbalance and reduce noise.

Aside from that, your only option would be to replace the fans. If they are a standard size and use a standard connector (and I'm not familiar with the Power Mac, to be honest), that shouldn't be terribly expensive.

I just got back from the Apple Store to exchange an iPod (for a bigger size) and asked them about it and they said that it was probably dust on the fan. I'll take the thing apart tonight and take a look at it to see if I can scrape it off or just blow it off with my vacuum cleaner (it has a reverse vacuum mode).

It would be nice to get the machine back as the demand for Macs in our house is constant. One of the Firefox Power G5 builders switched to Linux and so there are no Power G5 optimized Firefox builds available anymore. I used to do them but stopped because there were others building them.

This might be OT, but seriously when I read the thread title I had this picture of screaming girls taering off their shirts and jumping along railings...

Noisy fans...

and then it got even better with

As the fans age, the bearings inside of them will begin to wear and make noise.

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lold.

lmao, nice yogi

I opened it up as much as I could and was only able to take out the clear plastic part. I couldn't figure out how to remove the metal and plastic housing around the CPU and I didn't feel like taking a screwdriver to the bottom of the case. There was a lot of dust on the metal supports and I could not get to the fans directly so I vacuumed as much dust as I could from the metal supports and outside of the machine and then the exhaust grill from the CPU enclosure. I switched the vacuum to blower mode and blew the air around inside and that still kicked up a lot of dust from the inside. Then I put it in front of the two large intake fans in the back and that blew a moderate amount of dust out through the exhaust vent. The fans made the whining sound as they got up to some pretty high RPMs. Then blew dust through the front intake fan connected to the mono speaker. Went over the metal supports with my hand and got up dust that was stuck to the metal supports, closed it up, hooked it up and ran Firefox and surfed to a few website. Fans were quiet. Moved the MacBook Pro to another desk (it was on the PowerMac desk) and now we have two working Macs. Of course the MBP is much faster but speed isn't everything. I'm going to try to do some optimized G5 Firefox builds as I'm way behind on those and the person that was doing them announced his retirement recently.