PSU makes crackling noise, please help.

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Manos Liakos

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Basic system specs:

i7 6700k OC to 4.5GHz (1.250v)
16gb Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 Ram
AMD R9 380 4GB
Seasonic M12ii-520w Evo Edition (80 plus Bronze)

PSU almsot 2 years old, it started doing this some weeks ago, when I switched from g3258 to 6700k if I remember well. Anyway, it first did this when gaming (high load on GPU-it still does it when gaming and the noise gets louder at this time), but now it has become permanent. It occasionally stops and then it starts again (from days to days). What could have been wrong with this high quality power supply? It is enough to power my GPU and my CPU, kind of at the edge, but enough. Noise is like frying meat or something, crackling, poping noise. It is NOT the fan, as I tried to stop it from spinning for 1 second and sound kept going. Any ideas? Thanks!

P.S.: I re-inserted the cables, turned on the pc again, opened a game, and no sound was coming from anywhere. But when I minimized the window, sound came back. I had noticed that there was a relation between the noise and the windowed-fullscreen mode with other games. Thought it was drivers-related issue, but how can that be drivers-related since noise starts as soon as I power the PC up? Also, shutting down the PC, returned me once an error that overclocking had failed.
 
Solution
panathas
You shouldn't have opened it. Now you have voided the warranty plus it's extremely dangerous to open the PSU case and check its components, if you don't know what you are doing. What you should have done is just return it to the shop you bought it in the first place and they should have honoured the warranty. Now since the noise is gone, it seems that something you did during the PSU opening may have somehow fixed the issue. Maybe something was loose inside the PSU or was getting in contact with that big capacitor causing the noise. I think you should be fine. Keep using that PSU and if the strange sound returns or something else occurs such as abnormal voltages, system resets, restarts, shut downs, etc, then get a new one, since you no...
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panathas

panathas

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Are you sure that the noise doesn't come from the GPU? It seems that your PSU might be going bad. I'd say the most likely suspect is the PSU's fan but then you said it's not the fan. How were you able to stop the PSU'S fan, perhaps you meant another fan and not the PSU's one?

You can do the following 2 things and check if it makes any difference to the noise. First return the overclocked CPU to its default clock. If that noise doesn't stop then remove the AMD GPU and try running your system with the integrated Intel one.
 
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Manos Liakos

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Kalhspera :p No, I meant the PSU fan. I used a cotton bud to stop it for just a se cond from the top vent of the PSU, and didn't make any difference to the noise.Ok, if any of these works, what will it mean? In any case I think that the PSU is the suspect and the unit that will have to be replaced...I also recently read some bad comments about seasonic's poor customer help.No more trust for seasonic...
 
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NerdIT

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Bad PSU man, RMA if you can :\
 
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panathas

panathas

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Geia sou file ;) It's clear that your PSU has some issues and if it still is under warranty you should get it replaced. If the warranty period has expired then you should buy a new one.

If you can't afford one right now you can try the 2 things that I mentioned above. If you can stop the noise by just reducing the load on the PSU then it's clear that the noise is somehow related to the power consumption and your PSU could fail completely anytime in the future, under heavy load. If the noise doesn't stop, it means that the issue isn't as serious as in the first case and it may just be a coil that somehow got loose and vibrates. You can keep using it then for a limited amount of time, provided that you monitor all the PSU's voltage rails and you don't see anything strange there. That PSU has protection mechanisms that should protect the system in case something goes terribly wrong.

That said if I were you, I would replace that PSU as soon as I can. Kalh tyxh.
 
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Manos Liakos

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It is actually under its 5year warranty..but you know how it works in Greece....
I am not even thinking of try to use my warranty. Best thing it goes to Seasonic, I'm told that the unit is perfectly fine and stay with my *** in my hand :D
 
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Manos Liakos

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Update: I opened the PSU, just to find out that the sound was coming from a big brown capacitor, actually the biggest and fattest one in there. Capacitor being on the primary side which I think converts the AC from the wall to DC for the computer to use. Please note that if I do the paperclip test without connecting motherboard or CPU to the PSU, sound goes away. So, I think it has to do with the voltage regulation and the lack of power from the PSU or something...
 
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Manos Liakos

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Why in the world would the sound just stop randomly? Now nothing can be heard whether I'm pushing extremely my system or not. Sound's gone! Should I replace my power supply or not? I am confused.
 
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panathas

panathas

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You shouldn't have opened it. Now you have voided the warranty plus it's extremely dangerous to open the PSU case and check its components, if you don't know what you are doing. What you should have done is just return it to the shop you bought it in the first place and they should have honoured the warranty. Now since the noise is gone, it seems that something you did during the PSU opening may have somehow fixed the issue. Maybe something was loose inside the PSU or was getting in contact with that big capacitor causing the noise. I think you should be fine. Keep using that PSU and if the strange sound returns or something else occurs such as abnormal voltages, system resets, restarts, shut downs, etc, then get a new one, since you no longer have any warranty left.

EDIT: One last thing, that I forgot to mention is that maybe your PSU is fine and something else is damaged inside your system causing that strange PSU behaviour. I've heard about same extremely rare cases where a GPU with bad voltage regulators may cause the PSU to produce coil whine. Maybe you fall under that category but as I said it's a rare scenario but you should always keep that in mind.
 
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Solution
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Manos Liakos

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I didn't care anymore about the warranty..The shop I bought it from doesn't answer emails or calls, just as they did when I purchased this product. I opened the unit to locate the sound, of course wearing plastic gloves and having it disconnected from the wall. No, I didn't fix anything because the noise came back again. Now that I am writing this, noise is gone again. The only thing I noticed was something related to overclock: When i cold booted (pc shut down for some hours) my asus motherboard said during POST "Overclocking failure". I don't think my OC isn't stable, I've been rendering on this machine for days without any problem. I actually ordered an EVGA SuperNova G2 650w unit. I might use this one in another build. Thanks for the support!
 
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panathas

panathas

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Some motherboards have some protection mechanisms in case an overclock goes bad. These protect the BIOS and help it recover automatically if something goes wrong. Something seems to be wrong with your overclock and it may be related to that PSU. If this message pops up again with the new PSU, you should look into that issue more thoroughly and check all your current overclocking settings. I don't thing it's a serious issue since your system seems to be stable. One thing you could also do is write down all your overclocking settings or save them in a BIOS profile (if your BIOS allows that), but I think it's easier writing them down, and then after this message pop-ups check again those settings and see if your motherboard has automatically changed any of them and what that was? That way you may eventually learn what's wrong with your overclock.
 
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Manos Liakos

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One thing I should mention, is that when I cold boot from a shutdown i get the noise, BUT i don't get the noise if I restart. And when I restart I need to log in to windows to stop getting the noise. If I remain in the login screen the noise still goes on. How in the hell would the psu be associated with a a coil/cap sound in the psu? I'm so freaking confused, literally. I don't know if I should get another psu. I could live by turning the PC on every time I need to and restart to stop getting that noise, but that is not a solution.
 
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