noise - motor-like whine from CPU area
2014-06
Mythoswolf
I have an odd sound coming from the area of my CPU. If i was to describe the sound I would say it sounds something between like a air filtration system for a fish tank when it has no water to pump and an RC car when it's stuck.
I thought at first it was my water cooling system and removed it and then put the stock fan in. After awhile the same sound started again. When the computer is sitting idle with no programs open it's fine. If I open a browser and leave it for a few minutes is when it starts up again. I also noticed that when I close the browser after hearing the noise it fluctuates but doesn't stop until i shutdown my computer down. I checked all temperatures and they seem to be within their normal range of 30 - 40 C.
Specs:
CPU: i7 4770K 3.50 GHz, MB: ASUS Sabertooth Z87 Armored, Case: Phantom 410, GPU: 2x 2GB 7850, HDD: 500GB and 1 TB, 5x Case fans, PSU: 750W
Note: Entire build is less than 7 months old.
Jason C
Sometimes sounds, especially higher frequency or in tight spaces (and oddly shaped spaces) can be hard to locate. Check your power supply fan, maybe it's dirty or one of the bearings are failing. That would be a first guess. Also check any case fans you have installed. You could try unplugging them one at a time when the noise is happening to see if it stops.
There's also the GPU fan, although the pattern you describe doesn't seem correlated with GPU usage. The observed increase during periods of activity lends evidence to a power supply fan issue.
A less common, but still possible, source could be vibrations from one of the coils in the power supply, although that would tend to make a "purer" sound than what you seem to be describing. This is often just a quirk and not an indication of a problem, but can be annoying.
Other than that the only moving (or potentially vibrating) parts are in mechanical hard drives, but your symptoms don't sound like that plus you'd certainly notice other problems if that were the case (although if you do find it is your hard drive; back up and replace immediately). I guess there's optical drives as well but that makes very little sense given the description.
General troubleshooting here is to remove components when possible (i.e. case fans, graphics card if you can fall back on integrated graphics) until the noise stops. When there are no components left to easily remove you've at least narrowed it down. You can pull the PSU out of the case (but leave it connected) and more easily identify if it is the source. You can do the same with a hard drive. You've already ruled out your water pump.
If you find the source is a fan, clean it thoroughly (and carefully) first, and if that doesn't stop the issue then consider a replacement part.
Psycogeek
I use a vaccume cleaner hose and pump hoses , or any tube even a paper towel tube , that is non conductive. put one end as best as one can to ear, and the other end you aim and point it at things until you locate the area where it seems the sound is loudest.
Another probably better method use a microphone like a lapel mic , and pass it through some amplifier or your sound card, and move it around to locate the sound. (many mics can have conductive cases).
While doing that you have to avoid smashing into fan blades, which doesn't help. Having 2 people can help, one listens and the other one points and avoids crashing into the wrong things.
I have used this method a few times, it has about a 50% success rate at pinpointing the item, even coil whine locations. If you have nice water cooling hoses it might be a way to get an ear on it.
Make sure it isnt comming out of your sound system, or from cell phone interferance, before climbing into the case. If it occurs with a CPU load or GPU load use benching programs to initiate a similar load as a constant while trying to locate the sound.
Jason C covered all the possible locations well, so this is just a long comment.
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.
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).
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.
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.