High pitched noise after boot

[armineke]

Hi!

Lately I've been encountering a very difficult problem with my pc and just can't find out what it is. I may be only 16 years old but I know a few things about pc's and this is the first time I had to ask for help in forums, so please help me.

The past few weeks my computer started making a very annoying and quite loud high pitched noise (something like this: http://www.noiseaddicts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/12000.mp3 ) right after windows boots. The moment my mouse/pointer pops up the noise begins. It's a high noise my father can't even hear...

Here are my pc's specs first:

-Cooler Master Real Power M520 (520W)
-MSI P35 neo combo (MS-7365 version 1.0)
-Intel core 2 Duo E4600 @ 2.40GHz -Thermaltake Ruby Orb cooler
-2.0GB DDR2 @ 334MHz
-ZOTAC GeForce 9800GT Eco (1GB)
-500GB Western Digital hard drive (WD5000AADS)
-GSA-H55L DVD-drive
-LAN adapter
-WLAN adapter

-MS windows 7 ultimate 32-bit

So last October I upgraded my pc (video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mohDgx-LqV4 ). I installed a new PSU, GPU and CPU-cooler. Everything went fine and the only problem i seldomly had was that my pc rebooted 2-4 timeswhen i tried to boot it.
A few weeks ago I installed a second hard disk(180GB) next to my old one(250GB). I've had no problems and used it as a backup drive for my documents, but a few days after I installed the drive my pc started to make a high pitched sound every once in a while. The sound started to return more often so I thought the newly installed hard drive was broken so I removed it, but the sound was stil there. A few days later the sound was there every time I booted my pc. After a bit of researching I figured out it could be the old hard drive that was broken. Therefore I went to a store yesterday to get the new one (WD5000AADS), i also bought a 12cm fan with a pathetic RPM of 500 but this is irrelevant i guess. After installing the drive and the fan in my pc the sound was still there!
It is driving me insane!

It isn't caused by the new fan, my cpu fan or the fan on my GPU (don't know what else on my GPU could make noise). It also isn't the dvd drive or any of the network adapter cards. I've ever heard of RAM or CPU's making noise... I also used another PSU and it made no difference so that's also ruled out.
My monitor is a HP vs17x. It has speakers built into it. The sound isn't coming from the speakers, when i turn off/unplug the monitor the sound is still there...
<b>So I guess all there's left is the motherboard</b> but i don't know what could be making the noise. I've checked those battery-like things(capacitors, right?) and they were just flat and silver, so nothing suspicious.

Does anyone know what i possibly could do? If anyone needs pictures i can make some...

<b>THANKS!!!</b>

EDIT:
Well...
I seems to be something driver-related to my graphics card after all. The sound is also coming from around the card, but not it's fan.
I installed windows vista, it recognised my GeForce 9800GT as a standard VGA adapter... There was no sound! But when I installed the driver for my gpu the sound was back again...
Then I reinstalled windows 7 again, windows 7 has a driver from microsoft for my 9800GT. The sound was there again, but when I selected a standard VGA adapter as my gpu the sound was gona again... When I install any driver (old or new) it's back again.

I really don't know what to do now...
I can't just let my gpu be recognisded as a stansard vga adapter, I won't be able to do much with that...
It's also weird that because haven't had any trouble with this before in my life...

So, does anyone know what I can do now???
Thanks...

 

[kiren]

Last time I had something like that it was the PSU being older and at the edge of what it could produce. New slightly higher capicity PSU in the same system produced no noise, old PSU in a lower power system still runs fine with no noise... That said it doesn't look like you should be close to what the PSU can output, unless its failing.

 

[armineke]

i don't think it's from the PSU. It isn't that old and it provides more than enough energy for my pc.
I tried listening to where it comes from annd the sound seems to come from the area where the grapics card is. It isn't caused by any of the fans though. It sounded like somthing on my motherboard was wrong....

 

[T_T]

Since sound is nothing but vibration in wavelengths, suggesting everything under the sun to check is going to be a very long troubleshooting process, especially if you're just visually inspecting.

Find something long enough (about a foot) to "probe" inside your computer. Basically what you want to do is find the source of the sound by putting the probe to your ear and listening to the volume. The louder the sound gets, the closer you're getting to the source.

This may not be the craftiest of tips, but it works.

 

[armineke]

Since sound is nothing but vibration in wavelengths, suggesting everything under the sun to check is going to be a very long troubleshooting process, especially if you're just visually inspecting.

Find something long enough (about a foot) to "probe" inside your computer. Basically what you want to do is find the source of the sound by putting the probe to your ear and listening to the volume. The louder the sound gets, the closer you're getting to the source.

This may not be the craftiest of tips, but it works.

The sounds seems too be coming from somewhere around or under my graphics card.

Now i think it's something related to the drivers of my gpu:
I installed windows vista, it recognised my gpu as a standard vga adapter. When I installed the drivers (old and new ones) for my gpu the sound was there again.
When I installed windows 7 again the sound was there immediatly because windows 7 has it's own drivers for my gpu. If i install any drivers for my gpu, the sound is there again...
Only when I select standard vga adapter as my gpu there is no sound.
This is weird to me because i haven't ever had this problem before...

 

[T_T]

Good observation. If the sound is indeed coming from the GPU and only when the GPU is enabled in Windows, then there is a possibility that either the fan bearings
or one of the capacitors on the GPU are bad. Those are the two most common reasons for high-pitch squeals related to GPU's.

There aren't any really good settings to adjust to stop the noise, but if you want to play around with them, a good setting to start with is video/hardware acceleration. However, tuning this setting down will decrease the performance of the GPU.

 

[armineke]

It isn't the fan, I unplugged it but that made no difference...

The sound seems to be coming from the GPU after all, I tried using a GeForce 8500GT and when I installed the drivers for it the sound wasn't there.
So something is wrong with the 9800GT, could be a capacitor...
Could also be something else...
I tried underclocking and overclocking the card with Zotac Firestorm(came with the card) and I adjusted the fan speed but none of those things made a difference.
I tried running FurMark to see if something changed by stressing the card but nothing changed. My card got up to 95°C with max load but the sound stayed thesame.

I did notice (for the first time) that my card's memory clock is 900MHz instead of 1800MHz in FurMark and in CPU-Z. I never noticed if the memory clock was 1800MHz but it has to be 1800 and not 900.
Maybe there's something wrong with my card's memory...

Does anyone know what could be wrong with that?

 

[Guest]

Hey , i had the same problem , the same sound the same pitch ... do this :


Turn off PC , Turn off PSU (from the switch) , Remove all the RAM from the pc , wait few seconds , Insert RAM (changing the places : RAM 1 goes to slot 2 from slot 1 etc.. etc..)
Insert all the RAM , turn ON PSU , TURN ON PC. = No high pitch sound.
It helped me , i hope it helps you too. Good luck brother Earther.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey