First of all, I would like to thank the following managers for their
suggestions, and recommendations.
bismark@alta.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Bismark Espinoza)
Jochen Bern <bern@penthesilea.uni-trier.de>
Jay Lessert <jayl@latticesemi.com>
Jim Harmon <jharmon@telecnnct.com>
fletch@ttmc.com (Fletcher B. Cocquyt)
cwarner@slpma8.ed.ray.com (Caleb Warner)
Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services <Glenn.Satchell@uniq.com.au>
brett@gims.com (Brett Geer)
Cheng, Bruce <Bruce.Cheng@Aspect.com>
Alfredo Sola <adminsis@intelideas.com>
Jeff J. Dingbaum <dingbaum@hep.net>
Bert N. Shure <bert@virtual.com>
I decided to call Sun 1-800-USA-4-SUN yesterday, and placed a hardware
warrenty service request. The Sun engineer I talked to told me right
away that he was aware of this problem, and would ship me a couple
cooling fan replacements. Per the engineer, the cooling fan used in
the early batch of SS5 170Mhz is not good. They have five blades.
The corrected version has seven blades, and is much quieter. When I
walked in my office this morning, a UPS box containing cooling fan
replacements was already at the doorstep. This is quite nice!
There is a twist however. The screws for attaching the fan to the CPU
are quite small, normal screw drivers won't work and may damage them.
One has to get a jeweler's screwdriver first. Recognizing this is a
potential problem, the Sun engineer called me back yesterday afternoon
and said that he would ship me replacement system boards instead.
Either one is fine. I am quite happy that soon I won't need to
suffer the chattering noise.
Regards,
Chin Fang
fangchin@jessica.stanford.edu
My orginal question:
>
> Dear fellow Sun managers,
>
> We have just got two new Sun 170Mhz SS5. After setting them up, I
> have found one of them has significant higher CPU cooling fan noise
> than the other. In fact, I was surprised that there should be such
> noise at all. It's not like the typical fan noise, it's more like
> chattering sound, which makes me quite uncomfortable indeed - worrying
> about long term reliability, that is.
>
> How should I deal with this? Should I return the system? Or can I
> do something about it myself?
>
> Your input is invited. Will summarize.