Occasional whistling noise in my machine?

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Infryndiira

Infryndiira

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Nov 23, 2014
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Hello forums!

I have been building my present system part by part, and have had each piece for a few months at least. Got the motherboard and CPU this June, the graphics card last December.

The past few days I have been rarely hearing a whistling noise from my rig, lasting no more than half a second. Its volume varies and it is done irregularly; I needn't be in a video game for it to happen but seemingly when I am quasi-idling.

On two occasions the computer blacked out and I had to force a restart, but this has not happened again since I disabled Windows putting the hard disk to sleep and other such settings. Right now I only occasionally hear the whistling sound. While it's not annoying, I am concerned and wonder what I should keep in mind about it.

I am not sure if it is coil whining, my ancient hard drive failing, or the fans... The case fans are mostly brand new, though, and it really doesn't sound like it's case fan noise in the first place. The system does get a lot of dust unfortunately. My hard drives include both a new and an old one, though neither has been showing any signs of defect. Also, today I checked my motherboard and the capacitators didn't seem damaged in some way (no bloating or the tops being not-flat).

So, any idea what might be causing this? Anything I should be worried about? Below are my specs:

Motherboard: MSI 760GA-P43(FX), 8 GB RAM
CPU: AMD FX-8320, non-overclocked
Graphics: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X OC 1 GB, non-overclocked
Power supply: Corsair 650W
 
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1N07
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1N07

1N07

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Without actually hearing the noise I can't offer much other advice than to check that the fans are all properly secured.
The next time you hear it try to pin-point where the noise is coming from.
 
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Infryndiira

Infryndiira

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Nov 23, 2014
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It is pretty difficult to pinpoint or record because it is very short and done extremely irregularly. I have received the noise when I'm on games and watching Youtube videos (typically when I do both at the same time). My case is roughly at knee-height at my right, but the sound does sound like brief coil whistling, kinda like a badly oiled machine in a sense? My machine's temperature and voltage readings seem alright too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hx1dmbg1shi1g2p/Screenshot%202014-11-24%2001.33.02.png?dl=0

The above image is an HWMonitor screenshot. I had it running and did get the noise while it was on.
 
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1N07

1N07

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Yeah, well my PC makes weird sounds every now and then too XD
You're probably fine, it's likely just a slightly worn fan bearing...

How loud is it? You can probably judge for yourself whether or not to get concerned...
If you want to, you could lift in on a chair or something, open the side panel and wait for the sound and see if you can pin-point it better?
 
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Infryndiira

Infryndiira

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Nov 23, 2014
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Oh, I know that PCs can sound like bloody tractors sometimes... It might actually be a fan.

I have three 120 mm case fans mounted. I bought two this summer, but the third one I have had since I first bought the case with an old PC (it's about 8 years old I think) and I have never cleaned it as it's tightly stuffed in the front... It could be this one. Sometimes it rattles like a tank engine when the PC starts up.

The loudness varies, but it's loud enough to easily be distinguished over the sound of my fans (they are not very silent as it is, and one system fan I have always at 100% output to increase cooling). I guess it's loud, but not deafening. It certainly feels that it can sometimes reach the volume of my voice, and I can usually hear it over the music or ambience of the video games I play though not if they get loud themselves (explosions, spell effects, etc).

If I leave the computer idling, the sound doesn't seem to pop up. It's always when I do something, and when you pair this with the fact the whistle rarely lasts more than half a second, it's pretty darn hard to pinpoint. I am only concerned because this has never happened to me in a machine before but the computer's performance doesn't seem to be impaired in any way.

EDIT: It's something between a whistle and a squeak. More like a squeak. Bleh...
 
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1N07

1N07

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So is the old fan always at 100%? If not and it only goes to 100% while under heavy use, then it would make sense that the noise only appears when it's spinning at 100%

You could try unplugging the old fan and seeing if the noise comes again. If not, obviously the noise comes from the fan.
 
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