I have a custom Built Dell 8200 Pentium 4 running at 2Ghz, with 1Gig Of Ram, Ge Force 3 Card, and 240 Gigabytes of Harddrive space, with XP Pro Installed. My Problem is whenever I turn on the computer its nice and quiet, about 10 minutes after the computer is Louder than my refrigerator, and even the neighbors can hear it. I have called dell and they told me that the Pentium 4 chip requires extreme cooling and that its normal. The Noise also fluctuates whenever I run a program or even moves the mouse over certain Icons. When the noise gets very loud sometimes, the computer will reboot. All my other dells are very quiet and I even have to look at the lights sometimes to make sure its on.

The problem is the CPU fan. No computer should be so loud the neighbours can hear it. Chances are that the fan is missing a bearing and needs to be replaced. Dell should do it for you. The reason the fan gets louder is the fan rpm is dynamically adjusted based on CPU temp and such. It restarts as a safety measure to keep your computer from melting.

You could try buying better quality system and CPU fans and retrofitting them. Try finding ones made for music oriented PCs as these systems have to be SILENT in use. be prepared to pay for this though... Squiff

2 things you cannot have a 240gig hdd i know for fact that the largest you ppossibly get is between a 40gig and a 60.. everything lese sound resonalbe.. so you system is making noise heres what you do first make your best effort to see if you can estimate where its comming from.. then just make a note of it.. secondly get your dell drivers and utilities disk and put it in your system then turn it off give it a moment and then turn it on and as it comes on repeatedly press F2 and once you see a "entering setup " or hear a bing (electronic)from the keyboard stop pressing the F2 key...once there at the top iot will say dell computer corp. hit ALT P till it says page2 at the top you will then see a boot order highlight the cd/dvd/cdrw drive with the up and down arrow keys then press the "U" keytill its at the top (the cd drive) then hit Escape and it will ask to save changes choose yes and give it a few the system will then boot to diagnostic after its fully loaded choose fully test all devices and then extended test.. now this icould take aabout 4 hours.. before you set this upp remove any external devices and have only the battery and the a/c adapter attached/plugged into, the system,... after its done call dell back at 1-800-247-9252 ext. 69219 this is the number for portables when bought as home and home office.. and informed them that you have run diags on the system and would like their interp on them.. now note this .. your cd rom drive might fail because your using it if the fixed drive(the one you put the diags disc in on the upper left hand side near the display hinges)is also a cd rw then it will definately fail the write test.. also you system may get a disc drive b failure if it does no worries its normal it happens that these system support have 2 media drive in the at the front left and disc b i think if for the secondary drive than or technicall third media drive.. aside from that if there are ior is anything else they'll be able to say its okay or not and setup repair serivce for youre machine...if its deemed that its not a CRU that needs to be replaced..probly not but thats for your own expectations..

Dellis where have you been for all this time. Western Digital and Maxtor have been making 100 -160 Gigabye drives for a while now. Western Digital is also planning to unleash their 180 Gigabyte Hard drive which should be out before the end of the year. I have installed on my machine, two Brand new 120 Gigabyte Western Digital Hard Drive with 8MB Buffer running at 7200 RPM. I bought these monsters because of the fast response time with my video editing work, without the getting into the SCSI price range. Check it out Dellis (http://store.westerndigital.com/product.asp?sku=1885475) Also checkout Maxtor's 160 Gigabyte drive but it has only 5400 RPM.(http://www.maxtordirect.com/product.asp?sku=1849773). The reason I choose western digital over maxtor is its fast drive revs(RPM'S) plus the additional 8MB Buffer. Thanks for your advice, however I tried that and also a full diagnostic test and all including the temps and all under the guidance of the Dell Tech's. All specs showed ok according to laws of the Dellites. I am trying to find a Typhoon cooling fan from Mabuchi corp. All other comments are certainly welcome.............. James..

Dell has had a ton of reports about their newer fans shipped out with the 8200's with processors that exceed 2.0 Gig. In fact we just released a memo to all our clients who have purchased a 8200 2gig or higher model about the fan problem. The series of fans shipped with the 8200 have a faulty fan bearing problem. If you haven't received your E-mail yetthen by all means call Dell again and ask them to ship a new fan out or to have a Tech Install it for you. We regret any inconvenience that this minor problem has caused and will in the future continue to grant our valued customers the quality that made Dell where it is today. Dell Tech.

Eureka! New Fan arived, power ratings were matched. Fan Installed and I could hardly hear the Dell. The new fan made all the difference in the world.......... Thanks Dell Tech...