Odd sounds from inside PC

Avesomefthat

Honorable
Nov 18, 2012
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Hi again Tom's Hardware,
Lately, when I fire up a game such as GTA IV/EFLC or Saints Row 3, there is a prevailing sound from inside the case. It's a hardware issue as I unplugged the speakers while I was playing games. The sound is similar to that of electrical interference, such as static when a television set has no signal and is playing the static connection. It's a 600W Xigmatek NRP-VC603, which is powering 4 case fans, an AMD FX 4170, with Xigmatek Loki heatsink and a XFX Radeon HD 7950 DD Edition. There's a generic 500GB Hitachi SATA III Hard drive and a generic DVDRW drive too.

When listening for it's location, it sounds like it's coming from either the PSU or the GFX card, which is worrying. The case is a zalman z9 plus with an ASUS M5A78l-m lx v2 motherboard to put this into perspective. One thought that crossed my mind is "Is this PSU enough to power my system, or is this just a cheap brand of PSU?"

What's causing this sound? I've stopped all case fans and the sound continues - The tech support from the company I purchased the PC from said "In this case, I would like for you to turn the PC off ad leave it for a minute. I would then like for you to get something like hard plastic or wood that you can push in the power supply to stop the fan from spinning. Once you have prevented the fan from spinning, I would like for you turn the PC on and see if the problem persists. If so, then the problem may be elsewhere and not the power supply." Surely this would damage the PSU.

Any help is much appreciated - thank you.

James
 

Avesomefthat

Honorable
Nov 18, 2012
69
0
10,640


It's similar to that, but it's more of a buzz/pop, like popcorn popping. Initially I thought it sounded like arcing, but there's no evidence of burning or bright flashing - so I'd guess it's not that. Do you think it could be anything else. Also thank you for the video, that's opened my view to what it could be :)