PC Hardware Question

I’ve got an old Dell Precision 390 I use for games, and it’s started freaking out & making noises like a jet engine because all the fans are running at full-tilt. This appears to be because a switch that’s activated when the case is open is b0rked. Any one had similar troubles with these? And, does anyone know if said switch is push to make or push to break? Cos if it’s push-to make, surely I can just solder the wires together where it connects to the mobo and trick the antique beast into working properly so I can play videogames next week when I’m off work.
(I do not wish to go soldering wires together on my mobo in the spirit of enquiry, without some advice. That sounds like a Bad Idea)

I believe it is push to make, you should be able to test it by temporarily shorting the jumpers on the motherboard. Also, most BIOS have an option to turn off intrusion detection which might be your best bet.

However, most intrusion switches usually only beep letting you know the case is open or show an alert at startup, sometimes they stop the machine from booting. I don’t know that it would cause the fans to work harder,
Dirty fans would probably be very obvious, so you may want to take a look in the bios, there might be some misconfigured fan settings, and as long as nothings overheating you should be able to control the speed that way.

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It boots, but it freaks out like the case is open. I’ve been meaning to post this question for weeks, bit I haven’t, so I can’t quite remember the exact bios error message, but I’ll do so and post it here. However, that is kinda what I thought the answer would be, so thank you in advance :slightly_smiling_face:

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Turns out it’s push to break. Dismantling the switch and insulating the wires then plugging the whole taped-up mess back into the mobo makes a nice quiet computer :slightly_smiling_face:

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