High pitched whistle coming from motherboard!

Are you certain that it is the motherboard and not your monitor?


If it starts after a few minutes you most probably can prevent it by keeping the motherboard cooler. Hotter might work too.

Hard drive.

Another possibility. I´ve had my graphics card give me a high pitched beeping once. That was right after i upped the volts...  

I have an older socket A MSI motherboard that has the same problem. I think it's either capacitors or voltage regulators. I bought it from a bargain bin a year and a half ago, and unfortunately didn't get around to building it up until the warranty was up. I couldn't stand the noise, so I just keep it as a spare board if someone is REALLY desparate, or perhaps deaf to high frequency sounds - lol. Try returning it, I know I couldn't put up with the squealing from that board. Being red, I suppose I can use it as a Xmas decoration - maybe I'll tie some Spruce boughs to it and hang it on the door. Hope you get it solved.

Here's my .02 cents. I recently upgraded to a E6600 Core2Duo. I RMA'd & sent back everything from the motherboard to video card, to the monitor, to hard drives, to the HSF CPU cooler.
I got down to the last thing I hadn't sent back, the ATX case. It turned out to be the "F"-ing PSU. All the dough I had saved I spent on shipping everything back to each vendor.  
The sound was so dam-ned high that I, too, couldn't identify the source until the very end since I didn't have a spare PSU to test with, nor any of the other hardware items since it was my first PCI-Xpress dual core system. I hope this helps. Good luck.

My guess is that there's a bearing on one of the fans that's starting to seize up and sqeals when it gets hot. Its kid of tricky, but when the noise starts, try pulling the fan wires off their pins one at a time. Probably best to pull a wire, then if the noise doesn't stop, reconnect it and try another.
If you test the heatsink fan, pull the wire and then either push it back together quickly or shut off the computer immediately. Don't want any fried cpu.

The only fan you can't test in this way is the psu fan. If all other fans make no difference as to the noise, its probably the psu fan and its time for a new psu. In my experience, capacitators and resistors can make some noise, but its usually very breif, just before they fail completely.

Well that's my 2 cents worth of suggestions.

I tried all the fans except the psu fan by stopping them momentarity using a pencil.
No luck.
The psu fans will not put out such a high pitched sound as they run at slower speeds. In any case I have been using the same psu in another machine earlier without any problems. It is a high powered psu with two fans and it is pretty new.
It is not the hard disk because the sound would come on even on disconnecting the hdd.
And the most frustrating thing is that it is very intermittent, like today it is coming on for very short durations many minutes after boot up.
So if I do send it in for a replacement, the guys who put it on the test bench at the dealer may not get it at all?!
I even tried to adjust the torque in all the mounting screws of the mobo with mixed results. It might go away for awhile....then turn up again.
I guess it is something resonating on the mobo .....
I think I will write to MSI, but am not very hopeful. I believe they (all mobo manufacturers) keep their brainy guys into the R&D rather than on cusomer technical service!

It could be a pixie trapped underneath the motherboard, making a desperate cry for help.

PSU is probably more likely.

My 0.02. I had a case like that. It was an alarm from the motherboard because the Heat Sink was not on properly.

My system specs:
MSI K8N Neo4
Athlon 3200+
2 X 512 Kingston DDR
Hitachi 160GB SATA II HDD
Asus DVD Writer
Powersafe 400W SMPS with two fans.
Philips 17" LCD monitor.
TV Tuner Hauppage
Sapphire ATI Radeon 1600 pci express with 256 MB

If the mobo is giving a warning about heatsink, etc, then MSI should be able to tell me that.
It is not written in the manual for sure.

I must say, I'm inclined to agree with muffin on this one. I too had an MSI board (SocketA), and certainly not top of the range, that emitted a high pitched squeal. I discovered it was cheap electrolytic capacitors (or one in particular) that was responsible for the noise. Took a bit of tracking down though, being intermittent, and sod's law thrown in, it never did it when you wanted it to.  

I've found that a high pitched whistle in an electronic component is down to something vibrating at an exceedingly high frequency (I've had a few TV's do it and my monitor does it at start up), with my TV's a quick whack usually sufficed, though not really recommended for a mobo.

I dare say the only realistic solution is either put up with it or replace it, repairing such things is usually more hassle than it's worth (and finding exactly what is making the noise would be a nightmare).

Well, I actually had a toublesome DFI board do the same thing, it was coming from some where near the north/south bridge. I believe it might have been a squealing cap or the chip itself making that noise.... I could not stand it. You can try to isolate it from the PSU by unplgginng the PSU and jumpering the pins out that power the psu on. It might also have something to do with the PSU sending bad power, causing the motherboard to make this noise. I know how you feel man.... like I said, it drove me crazy....

wes

I have an MSI motherboard, 3500+ and 6800GT. I have the same exact issue. It's a very high pitched noise that definitely sounds like it's from an electrical component. Mine starts up when I start the computer but then kind of goes on and off. It really gets going when I start up a game which made me always think it was the video card.