cpu - Extremely high pitched noise just came and went from my PC in the space of about 2-3 minutes

08
2014-07
  • user1561108

    With my hearing I'm not totally sure but seemed to be coming from PSU/CPU area. Anyone know what would normally cause this temporary squealing? Gradually built up pitch and noise for about a minute then another minute or so of continuous noise then winded down again. PC's about 18 months old.

    • Answers
  • JohnnyVegas

    The internal processor or case fan is on its way out - definitely replace both or it could be expensive.


    • Related Question

    video - high pitched whine from newly built PC
  • A_M

    I've just built a new PC:

    • Asus P6T Deluxe v2 motherboard
    • i7 920
    • Sapphire HD 4670 Passive heatsink
    • Corsair 620hx portal supply
    • Antec P183 case

    Sometimes when I turn it on, there is a high pitched "electrical" whine that comes from the PC. It doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes the PC is quiet after I've turned it on. During boot, the pitch gets higher or lower, depending upon what is currently on the screen, e.g. BIOS post screen might be higher than a black screen.

    Its not the fans - I've stopped each one and the whine continues.

    I don't think its the power supply - it sounds louder when I put my head near the main chamber of the case.

    So I think its either the video card or the mother board, but I'm not 100%

    Has anyone any idea what might be causing this, and how I can determine which component is causing it? I don't have any spare components to swap in and out to check this, and I don't want to guess at sending parts back to the supply.

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

    UPDATE: It feels like to me that this only happens when I've attempted to set up RAID1 on two of my disks. I've not been successful setting up RAID yet (that's another story), but I've disabled RAID at the moment since I'm fed up trying to get it going. The PC is not whining at the moment. My gut reaction is that this has only happened when the machine had RAID set up. I'm now going to run for a while with my non-RAID set up and see if I get the noise or not.

    Thanks for all the suggestions so far.


    • Related Answers
  • Arlen Beiler

    It is probably this problem since you said that it seemed to be related to the RAID.

  • 8088

    Could be your power inductors are singing or whining on a switch mode DC-DC power supply? The inductor can vibrate at different frequencies depending upon the power draw of the load (such as the CPU for the core power supply). Try putting some hot glue on the toroidal inductors on the board (especially if can hear it close up).

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    By the way, the sound isn't necessarily a cause for concern or indicative of a potential failure.

  • 8088

    Given that you have a passive heatsink on your GPU, you wouldn't expect that to be a problem.

    When I look at your motherboard it actually supposed to be quiet too. It's too bad it doesn't have integrated graphics, but you could still try to boot without your GPU (just take out the power supply) and see if you still hear that sound.

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    What kind of cooler do you use for your CPU and are you sure it's connected correctly?

    If it's an electrical problem, if read some forum posts suggesting you should tweak your voltage settings a little bit. Given that your board is specifically made for OC-ing it shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps a little tweak will give us more information.

    Plus if it's a motherboard problem, you could try a BIOS update.

  • Troggy

    This might actually be a noisy electrical component on a part. Either the motherboard or video card most likely. My first suspect would be the power supply, but you said that doesn't seem to be the source. Passive cooling would not stop a noisy component if that was the culprit. The frequency changes as different levels of power are passed through the component.

    I know the machine will not boot, but when it starts making that whine, shut down and remove the video card, and power it back up. Leave it on for a bit, and of course it will not boot and beep at you, but you can see if it was the video card making the noise.

  • Jouni K. Seppänen

    Just a shot in the dark: it could be the same kind of CPU noise that occurs on (at least) ThinkPads and MacBooks using Core Duo - perhaps the i7 has similar issues. See e.g. this thinkwiki page for some BIOS and Linux settings that you could try out.

    Even if you want to run Windows and not Linux, you could boot from a live Linux CD (Knoppix used to be the best-known such, but the Ubuntu install CD works too) and see if any of the tweaks fixes the whine. If so, try to find a Windows utility to do the same thing.

  • tsilb

    Shut down, unplug something, boot. Repeat until the noise goes away. You can run a computer without a video card.

    Do not unplug your CPU fan. You can apply 12v power to it by shorting ATX Pins 4 and 6 without running the system itself.

    If the noise doesn't go away. stick your head in the case while it's running and listen for the direction of the sound.

  • MDMarra

    Did you connect the 6-pin PCIe power connector to your video card? Some video cards let out a high pitched whine when that connector is unplugged.