Hello everyone, just thought I'd post this in the Windows forum as it's the most appropriate place methinks.
My question is basically, why are PCs that are assembled by individuals, not as quiet as PCs that are built by HP, Dell, etc? (I know that the ones from big companies are technically built/tested by humans [hopefully], but just stick with me here please).
Now some people may argue with me cos I'm generalising a bit, but it's just my experience. I bought a computer in 2004 that was assembled by a friend for a friend. And it was a great rig (XP Pro, Pentium 4, 1.5GB RAM, 180GB HD, 128 Nvidia card) i used it and loved it for years, but then last November, it went dead, and i never got round to fixing it... so when I got some more money I bought ANOTHER assembled PC this year. This one is an E6750 (so Core 2 Duo), 2GB RAM, 400GB or so HD. Performance-wise, I couldn't really complain about these computers, (apart from when I ran VMWare on the old one for Ubuntu, I couldn't sort out the lag even with VMWare Tools installed), but still, that was not a problem. My only issue with them was that, on start-up, whenever the processor was busy (searching for files, running a virus scan, or even just preparing to open up a webpage or to go to screen saver), I could HEAR it. There was (and is with my present machine) a sort of scratching noise which I use to know when its doing something, or about to do something, or trying to do something and maybe having problems.
Now I know a friend with a Dell that is just 512MB RAM, no graphics card, XP as well (not sure which), and even though his computer was slower than mine, it was quietly so. And at work, we have HP pcs, and I've just been asked to clean up an old Compaq one (same company I know but still), and the compaq even runs on Athlon 2600, but the point is, they are all relatively noiseless in the way that i've described my machines to be.
My simple question is "Why is this so", can anyone tell me? Is it anything to do with fans, cos I did think I might need to get one more. Or is it just some sort of 'magic' that the guys in a big factory can perform, but the people in smaller or no factories can't? Am I making any sense at all?;)