PSU sounds like a hard drive reading/writing

M3Stang

Commendable
Oct 12, 2016
16
0
1,510
Hey guys. I have had this Corsair TX850 for about 4 years. Just did a new build 2 weeks ago and moved the PSU from my old build to the current one. The old build was all overclocked so it had alot of fans and it was super loud all the time. This computer is super quiet. When playing games I noticed there was a hard drive sound. Turns out its coming from the PSU while the fan is off. I am unsure if it goes away when the fan is on. The Corsair TX850 only turns the fan on at greater than or equal to 50% load. For all I know it could have been making this sound for the past 4 years. Its been in and out of 3 computers but being that this is my most expensive build yet, I am worried that it could cause damage to all of my other components. I dont have a "high powered" build anymore IMO.
6700K
16GB DDR4
GTX 1070
M.2 SSD
1TB HDD
Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 3
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
The fan moves a tiny bit while idling, making a relatively loud "click" noise. With the rest of the computer being very silent it's hard to ignore.

The only work around I have found is to set the fan speed to 40%, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a PSU fan that is supposed to be 100% silent at idle, no?

Hoping for a permanent solution.

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116511
 
Solution

aaron7

Distinguished
May 26, 2010
62
0
18,630
It isn't the fan. It's called "coil whine", and I know exactly what you mean. Literally sounds like a hard drive that's reading/writing. It's usually indicative of a failing PSU. You're not crazy!