Whining noise ONLY when playing games

[Squadfer]

Ok so I have 2 cavier blacks 640gb setup in raid 0. Whenever I launch a game it creates a high pitch whining sound. Now I'm not usually affected by it because I wear headphones while I play however the noise is bugging me because I cant seem to figure out why it is doing it. In games the pitch of the noise changes when I go over different menu items with my mouse. Like in Cyris wars if I go over the menu items; multiplayer, profile, options, credits, quit. All of them drop the pitch of the whine down besides for Quit, Quit brings the pitch up a little bit. This is when I move my mouse over the items, no clicking involved.... When I play Counter-Strike source though...it doesnt do this whining sound at all... I just dont understand why my HDD's are doing this. If anyone can point me in a direction to figure this out that would be great.

 

[sub mesa]

Could be two things. The first is a sound generated by electrical components, likely from the video card. The other is that the onboard sound is distorted by EMI and the distortion is audible via the speakers.

If its the second case, use an external sound card (usb audio). If the first, little you can do about that. Sometimes you can claim warranty, but often they wont want to treat it as a defect, since aside from the noise production the electronics can work fine.

 

[Squadfer]

K, so most likely its not a sign of the HDD failing? considering its like a week old... Also I'm not using onboard sound yet and probally wont be... I'm using USB headphones that has its own little soundcard built into the cord. And I have a soundcard sitting on my desk at my apartment for when I plug my speakers up, but that will happen when I go back to school in a month.

 

[sub mesa]

Connect your PC to a grounded AC inlet, you're probably using no ground line which may cause this kind of distortions in the USB audio. I initially thought you meant some sound coming from inside your casing, but this sounds more plausible.

 

[neon neophyte]

do you have a gtx200 series?

 

[Squadfer]

I have one HD4890, about to be 2. Corsair 750TX. It is connected to a APC backup which is connected to the wall. The sound is coming from the computer itself. If it was coming from my headphones I would be going crazy but since its not it is tolerable. I have tried to find out if it is just a bad HDD by transfering movies onto the drive and then playing the movies off the drive but that didn't create any sound. But the games that I have installed on the drives do create noise....from the drives themselves. I have opened my case to listen to where the sound is coming from and it is coming from the front bottom, the same spot where my HDD's are.

 

[neon neophyte]

oh, i asked because, the gtx285 has a tendency to squeel under load. its a well documented occurance.