I know what you're going to say based solely on the word "click" and I want to tell you, no, it's not the hard drives. I've heard the click of death, and that is not this sound, nor does this click correspond to any hard drive activity at all. Rather it seems to occur in conjunction with CPU usage, like resizing Explorer windows or moving them around on the screen. It's easiest to observe this by opening the Task Manager, and moving it around on the screen. As the CPU Usage History graph shows activity occurring, this noise occurs constantly, and when the system sits idle, it's silent. My CPU fan speed and temperature both are showing their usual readings. The only thing I can think of is that somehow the fan is noticing this CPU activity happening, and spins a little faster to keep it cool? Does that make sense? Possibly related is that recently my system has had some awful loud fan noise when I first turn it on, but those tend to disappear after about 10 minutes. I didn't notice the clicking occurring until that started happening as well.

Sounds to me you should try replacing a fan or two,starting with the cpu fan.If the prolem persists,you might try replacing the cpu with another just to test.Goodluck.

Dahak

Yea sounds kinda like a dying fan to me too.

Electrical noise from the CPU will be amplified by some onboard sound hardware. Some microchips will physically vibrate enough to make audible noise. Where does this sound come from? Try to find the source. The CPU itself shouldn't make any noise because the mass of the heatsink would damp any vibration. It may be a ceramic capacitor, PC buzzer, or your desktop speakers/headphones. Noise can easily be heard with headphones when using low quality onboard sound. Almost any add-on sound card will have enough filters to prevent this from being a problem.

Yeah, what he said.

Regardless of what is causing clicks, if your cpu fan was making a lot of noise it probably has a bad bushing/bearing and you had better replace it before it stops spinning. You can stop the fan with your finger temporarily while someone else moves the task manager around and see if the noise stops, but I doubt it is the cause.

I know it seems hard to believe, but my old computer did the exact same thing. It was definitely NOT not any of the fans. As far as I could tell it only happened while scrolling or moving a window around, and it was soft enough I couldn't hear it unless my head was next to the case while open. It was like every time the screen changed I could hear a little clicking sound.

i also have the same problem, and it isnt any problems with fans. Its something to do with the CPU. Mine dosnt always do it, only when the cpu is being maxed out. the only time i hear it is when i run the CPU test in 3dmark06...every time the frame changes i hear a click. i still have no idea what it is. oh also, my cpu is overclocked, and when its at stock speeds, i dont hear the click sounds...so could be something to do with particular motherboards and the power consumption of the cpu....?

its most probably something to with the capacitors, namely the ones feeding power to the cpu...when the cpu is under high strain, it will be sucking as much power as it can from these capacitors, so each time the cpu begins processing a new frame, the sound you hear could be the burst of power the capacitors receive....i dont know too much about how capacitors work, but one of my friends gave me this theory a while back, so dont quote me on it, im sure i missed out some facts

The PC buzzer is possibly playing electrical noise from various high power components (like the CPU). This is pretty common. I can hear it on my headphones when I use cheapy built-in sound.

RAM chips are probably the most noisy things I've heard in small computer system.

Being deaf in one ear, this kind of thing drives me crazy, since I can't tell direction of sound. Things I would check:
1. If a CRT monitor, it might be coming from the monitor, since moving windows around is what's doing it; something to do with load on the CRT drivers. Similarly, it could be coming from the graphics card.
2. Not likely a fan. However quickly you rev it up and down, it won't "click".
3. Do you have access to a stethoscope? Cheap capacitors or ferrite chokes could be doing this, but you'll never find them without a way to pinpoint the origin.
4. Kill your sound, to eliminate the possibility of "crosstalk" somewhere.

Unrelated, a loud fan that quiets is dying. Find and replace it before it croaks.

My system hisses at some points in time, and when running CPU tests in 3dmark I sometimes get an extremely high-pitch noise from my PC.

this exact thing happened with my mini-itx board with a via c3 processor. any time i would move a window around on the screen, or did some cpu intensive tast, there would be a slight buzz from the pc speaker. a very low frequency buzz, almost enough to sound like individual clicks rather than a sustained tone. the sound would also be barely audible in my headphones when using them with the onboard ac97 sound. I think it does have something to do with electrical noise caused by the cpu or voltage changes when its under a load.

After a little observation (which is difficult during normal use considering the layout of my computer desk) I'm now highly suspicious of the fan on my chipset (motherboard is Epox EP-9NPA+Ultra, picture on site doesn't show fan on chipset). While both the CPU fan and the case fan remain perfect blurs all during operation and finger stopping them doesn't seem to do anything to the noise, the little chipset fan appears to have a slight stutter that matches the pops and clicks, but it's not really in a great position for sticking my hands into a running computer to test that theory out.

Did a little trial and erroring after that last post, and I'm afraid the news is not good.

I started by unplugging the power from both my hard drives and turning the system on. There was no screeching noise.

I plugged in the system drive and turned it on. Got a screeching noise.

Unplugged system drive, plugged in the other drive. Got a screeching noise.

Unplugged chipset fan, plugged in both drives. Got a screeching noise.

Tried each drive individually with chipset fan unplugged. Both screeched.

Just to make sure it wasn't any kind of power drop out from the PSU not feeding enough power to a device, I plugged in my Antec power supply tester, and it passed.

I guess I know now what I need to replace. *sigh* I was so positive it wasn't my hard drives too.

Two dodgy drives = bummer.

I've backed up my stuff, and now I've been messing with it, seeing just what is causing what. First off, both drives have impeccable SMART scores, both are free of any disk damage, and they defragmented like a dream. What is most interesting about the defragmenting, is that that clicking sound did not happen much at all during the whole process. There was maybe a click every 30 seconds, as opposed to the continuous clicking that goes on during something like a BitTorrent download or opening up Google Earth or Photoshop. There was just the old familiar hard drive sounds that matched themselves to the disk activity LED, which the clicks have never matched themselves with. Even though the drives are (seemingly) annoyingly loud for about 10 minutes after bootup, there is absolutely nothing to suggest they're both failing. I've had a total of 2 hard drives out of probably close to 30 die on me in 10+ years of building my own systems for home and for work. It just strikes me as highly improbable that 2 of them, in the same system, at the same time, would be dying with the same symptoms. Neither of the two seems to exhibit the click noise with any more frequency than the other one. I'm back to the CPU activity as my only visible, measurable, and reproducible cause of the noise. I guess this is just one of those strange unexplainable things that computers do.

Two bad drives, I find that suspect. Plug those drives into another system. Also, I'm not sure, because I haven't researched it yet, but I am pretty certain that the PS tester does not put much of a load on the PS. A PS that shows good at a Light load may still not be able to provide sufficient current to the system. I'm not saying your PS is bad just that the tester will not necessarily be conclusive.

Perhaps you didn't notice the hardrives clicking before?

You might have installed new software (knowingly or unknowingly) thats causing your system to have to page to the HDD during periods of high activity.

I have a raptor myself thats noisy as hell, so maybe I'm biased. One thing i did was try running the computer while the HDD was sitting on an anti-static bag outside the system. I figured out that most of my drive noise was a result of vibrations inside my case. Fixed it by padding the drive with vibration dampeners.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

It was the power supply. No more clicks, no more screeching fan. All is well.

When i used on board sound i could hear the electrical/signal noise from just moving my mouse, aswell as any processing going on, just having a creative audigy stopped that noise.