Post
70
My PSU fan started making noise. Turns out that's not nothing either.
Same rig, different failure mode from the GPU freeze post. This one didn't kill a training run — it just wouldn't go away.
The pattern: silent at cold boot, "grr + zzz" cyclical noise kicking in after ~2 minutes of runtime, tracking the fan's own accelerate/decelerate cycle. Ear-to-case testing ruled out the HDD and the GTX 1080 Ti. It's the PSU fan. No crackling, no smell, no smoke — so no panic, but no ignoring it either.
The PSU documents its own fan curve: idle speed until 50% load at 25°C ambient. My CPU alone never gets close to that threshold, which is exactly why the noise never showed up under light tasks — only once thermal buildup pushed the fan into the RPM band where a worn bearing becomes audible. Classic cold-silent, warm-loud signature of bearing wear, not an electrical fault.
I'm not opening the unit. The PSU's own safety documentation says never to, even unplugged — internal capacitors can hold a dangerous charge well after disconnection. Some repairs aren't worth the corner-cut.
Plan: keep GPU load light for now, full replacement within 1-2 months before wear turns into failure. The old unit doesn't go in the bin — it sits next to the 1080 Ti. Both trophies from the same stretch of work.
Same discipline as the GPU wall: hear the symptom, isolate the cause, don't assume it's nothing just because nothing crashed yet.
Full write-up 👇
🔗 https://huggingface.co/blog/RDTvlokip/the-other-kind-of-hardware-wall-when-its-not-the-g
Same rig, different failure mode from the GPU freeze post. This one didn't kill a training run — it just wouldn't go away.
The pattern: silent at cold boot, "grr + zzz" cyclical noise kicking in after ~2 minutes of runtime, tracking the fan's own accelerate/decelerate cycle. Ear-to-case testing ruled out the HDD and the GTX 1080 Ti. It's the PSU fan. No crackling, no smell, no smoke — so no panic, but no ignoring it either.
The PSU documents its own fan curve: idle speed until 50% load at 25°C ambient. My CPU alone never gets close to that threshold, which is exactly why the noise never showed up under light tasks — only once thermal buildup pushed the fan into the RPM band where a worn bearing becomes audible. Classic cold-silent, warm-loud signature of bearing wear, not an electrical fault.
I'm not opening the unit. The PSU's own safety documentation says never to, even unplugged — internal capacitors can hold a dangerous charge well after disconnection. Some repairs aren't worth the corner-cut.
Plan: keep GPU load light for now, full replacement within 1-2 months before wear turns into failure. The old unit doesn't go in the bin — it sits next to the 1080 Ti. Both trophies from the same stretch of work.
Same discipline as the GPU wall: hear the symptom, isolate the cause, don't assume it's nothing just because nothing crashed yet.
Full write-up 👇
🔗 https://huggingface.co/blog/RDTvlokip/the-other-kind-of-hardware-wall-when-its-not-the-g