High pitch sound from case?

derek2006

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May 19, 2006
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Hi. Whenever I run something cpu intensive I get a annoying high pitched sound coming from inside the computer. I can not figure out what it is. I disconnected the internal speaker to see if the sound was coming from that but I still heard it. Then I went to see if the fans where making the sounds so I disconnected my 2 in and out fans. Set the GPU fan to 0% with ati tool. Then I stuck a screwdriver into the psu fan and tt Big typhoon fan to stop them. But the high pitched sound came up still when running something intensive such as Prime 95. Then I disconnected my 2 hard drives except for the system disk and it still made the sound. And I monitored the disk usage for the system drive and there were no read and writes when it made the sound. Just cpu usage. So where is this annoying sound coming from and why is it doing it?
 

mmattb

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When you say you disconnected the HDs from the system, do you mean the data cables or the power cables?

If you kept the power cables plugged in, then you would still get sound from the HD if that sound was related to the spinning of the disk (as opposed to related to head movement as it accesses the disk).

I once had a Western Digital that progressively started to make more and more high-pitched noise over time. I could not find where the sound was coming from and started to turn off fans, just like you. It wasnt until I unplugged the POWER from the drive that i realized what was going on. Bad bearing maybe?

Also, remember that you can unplug every HD, including the system disk, and still be able to turn the system on. You just wont be able to get into your OS. So try unplugging power from all HDs and turning the power on to see if the sound goes away.
 

MisfitSELF

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That can't be good. When an electrical component that is not associated with moving parts starts making noise, it's about to fail. It may not be tomorrow or next week, but I'm willing to bet if it's the memory (or someother component, eg transitor, cap, or otherwise) that you don't have long before you're going to have to replace the part (or the whole MB).

The old vacuum tubes in my father's TV and radio would buzz a little but that's different (-;.
 

trixst4r

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it's your DS3 most likely, I have the same problem on two seperate DS3 boards.

I believe its coming from the coil right below the PCI-E slot and right about the SB. See if you can pin point it.

I get it when I run the 2nd test of orthos on blend. And I also get a quick couple of seconds of it when I open up CPU-Z.

I'm pretty certain it's not my ram either, I have been through 2 dif sets of my OCZ 6400 plat rev 2 and the sound is still there.
 

eltotoX

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All ram sticks make noise. As for the hard drives... I seriously doubt it, since CPU intensive programs (games, torture tests, etc) usually don't access the hard drive as they use ram. When you run benchmark programs you usually access the ram and video ram a lot, hence the noise. I might be wrong though. Try accessing loads of crap on your hard drive, to see if it actually it's that (although I think it's unlikely) and playing games, to see if it's the ram or the video ram.
 

mmattb

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As I said, my sound did not come from HD accesses, it came from the spinning of the disk itself. Even if i unplugged the data cable the sound persisted. Hence my suggestion to unplug the power cables to the drives.

Who knows if its the problem this person is having? It only takes 30 seconds of unplugging to find out.
 

derek2006

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Yes I disconnected the the power to the hard drives. And If I disconnect the system drive and cant get into the OS how will I put load on the cpu. As trixst4r said it does do it when I open cpu-z also. This has just started occurring right after I put my computer back together after lapping the cpu. The sound does sound like a hard drive loading but it is very load and high pitched. The sound does sound like it is coming from the SB right below the GPU. I can't see it though because of the huge gpu cooler. Also I have my ac97 cord running right besides it I think and it is putting pressure on it I will remove the cord and see if the cord is causing anything.
 

derek2006

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The cable wasn't doing anything it was right on the little coil. I also defaulted everything to its stock clocks and voltages to see if anything would happen. Nothing still high pitched sound when running prime 95 or anything intensive.
 

derek2006

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As for the dims I unplugged one at a time then ran prime to see if the sound disappears. It didn't. I don't think both modules will both start making a high pitch chirping sound at the same time.
 

trixst4r

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Trust me, it's the DS3. Other people have been having the same issue with the DS3 on XS and a couple here way back when I first asked about this.

As I said, this has happened to me on 2 DS3 but I am not too worried about it. I don't hear it screech unless i use orthos or open up CPU-Z. Does anyone actually know what CPU-Z does at startup to get info from mobo on the hardware? Maybe this will help pinpoint teh problem.

Noise from components does not mean it will fail. Components with high switching frequency will ocassionally make noise and it is perfectly fine.