Quick summary: check the screws attaching the fan to the heatsink. They may be loose, or – as in my case – have fallen out altogether, causing the fan to vibrate and strike the shroud.

I’ve had a BFG 8800GT (OC) for 2 or 3 years now, and it’s always been fine: the stock cooler isn’t the quietest when heavy 3d use causes the fan to hit maximum speed, but that’s kind of to be expected. And on ‘phones, or speakers with a fair bit of volume, you don’t really notice it too much.

And then, a few days ago, mine started making an awful sort of “fan clipping wires/hitting something” screechy noise while playing Alien Swarm. On boot up, and during heavy 3d use (ie, when the fan hit 100%) it’d make the same awful noise. Uh-oh time.

It had been a while since I’d given the card a good hoovering, and in fact I realised I’d never dismantled it and cleaned it out properly. So naturally I assumed it was just crud in the fan.

What I realised next is that I have no idea how to get the shroud off the card. Most 8800s have the shroud screwed on: this one has it clipped on, but even with the clips undone there’s a bit of the shroud (around the fan) that refuses to budge, even if you apply a worrying amount of force. I guess there’s a screw under the sticker but it’s the kind of sticker that won’t peel off easily.

So I gave up on that and simply took the whole heatsink off, got rid of as much dust and fluff as possible, did what I could to make sure the fan wasn’t actually touching the shroud, sprayed the inside of the fan with some wd40, and put it back together.

No difference.

Then I took the card out again and had another look. I’d kinda wondered whether the fan noise – given that it only happened at max speed – was the result of some kind of imbalance, so that only at maximum speed would it hit something (and I presumed it was clipping the shroud, as there was nothing else there for it to hit).

And lo! On closer examination, what did I see but an empty screw hole where there ought to have been a screw holding the fan to the heatsink. A quick poke around the innards of my PC later, and I’d found the missing screw, which has clearly fallen out at about the time I noticed the noise.

Bad screw design. Bad something design, anyway. Easy gfx card fix. No need (yet) to replace the card or cooler. I replaced the screw, tightened up the others, and bingo! No more noise.

Clothes, emperor, new. Elephant, room. YOU’RE HOLDING THE WORLD’S BIGGEST MOBILE PHONE AND YOU LOOK DAFT, STEVE.

Either that or he’s shrunk.

It lasted until a whole week after the warranty expired before dying on me. The reason for its untimely demise? Bad Lid Design (probably).

The symptoms
From time to time, pressure on the right (or wrong) part of the lid would shut the machine off instantly. Then the webcam stopped working. As the warranty had expired I took the lid to bits to see what was wrong. You can dismantle an NC10 quite easily following the instructions here: http://netbookmag.com/2009/02/03/tutorial-samsung-nc10-touchscreen-installation/

In short, remove the four rubber stoppers from the corners of the lid, by the screen; unscrew the screws you find underneath; then use a credit card or similar non-scratchy implement to slide around the edges of the lid, and the front bezel will come off. Undo the screws holding the screen to the metal hinges at the bottom, and the LCD panel comes off.

By dismantling it to this extent and playing with the cables behind the screen (on battery power, of course) it became clear that the shut-down problem, and almost certainly the webcam problem too, was caused by a short in the cables and/or the LCD screen connector. Basically the lid is too flexible and the cables and connector too easy to “manipulate” from the outside by inadvertent pressure on the lid of the machine. I.e., Bad Lid Design.

I mantled the lid back up again and the problem remained. Two days later the machine developed a new problem, which is basically Netbook Death: it refused to boot.

This time I dismantled the whole thing, checked all the motherboard connections, re-checked the LCD connections, reassembled… no joy. I can get the power LCD to flicker on, but then it flickers off and no boot process begins.

I managed to buy a replacement LCD cable from eBay: with this in place, the machine will power on and start POSTing for a couple of seconds: the moment the drive light comes on (ie when disk access begins) it shuts off and won’t reboot until power is removed and reapplied.

The machine is dead. Most laptop repair places charge a minimum of £75 to investigate the problem, it seems to me. As replacement screens cost about the same, and replacement motherboards even more, and the minimum cost doesn’t usually include labour, there’s little point having it repaired. Why fix a £250 netbook for around £150 when you can buy a new one and get another year’s warranty?

I’m just not sure I’d buy a Samsung again… Bad Lid Design (probably) ruins the brand for me.