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PC acting up. What part do I replace?

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Hello everybody,

I'll make this real short. A week ago I was playing WoW out of boredom, not a demanding game. During the game my display went black and I had to restart. Afterwards my old Hitachi 250GB was clicking. I can watch any movie or youtube video still, do any task, but too much will cause the clicking to get more frequent. When I play any game the display turns black, and a fan in the computer gets really loud.

With my GPU fans on max, this fan gets much louder than the GPU. It's very hard to isolate what fan does it.

I went and got a new HDD. A SeaGate GoDesk 1TB USB 3.0. It works with SATA, too. After installing the GPU drivers, the hard drive itself made this exact same noise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9i5yixsJbk

I went and swapped the GoDesk 1TB for another and I'm having the exact same problem with that one. Either it was dropped which I suspect if may have been, and it's another faulty HDD, or it's my PSU doing this. If I attempt to play a game on the new HDD, all that will happen is my PC will freeze, and the HDD will start beeping like this. There were no loud fans, just beeping and freezing, and sometimes the display which warrants a restart.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I need to know if this is just 3 bad HDDs or my PSU/GPU...

All temperatures are fine, CPU has new thermal paste. The PSU is a 700W and is only a year old.

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Power supply Expert

I seriously doubt you got 3 bad HDDs in a row. IS there noise coming from the PSU to make you think it's the problem? Whatever fan is making the noise is probably the culprit, so if its a PSU fan, replace the PSU. If it's a GPU fan, replace the GPU.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck...

Hey Scottie, the first HDD was an old Hitachi from early 2007. It was on its way out a while ago, so the game crashing was most likely finishing off the cake. It still works but clicks a lot and acts differently than the other two.

The other two are different, both SeaGate GoFlex Desk HDDs. Both do the beep like in the video above. When the fans speed up, that only happens with the old Hitachi, not with the new. It beeps and freezes too much to even let me run a game so I cannot verify so easily.

I've never heard a PSU get louder than it usually is, and the CPU fan's Q fan is disabled so it's running pretty fast already. The fact that I can run movies and I seem to be getting a lot of cache errors from time to time in BIOS, and on the net, when it freezes it'll say waiting for cache which I haven't seen on Chrome before.

It's extremely hard to isolate which fan speeds up on the Hitachi. If I had to guess I would say it's either the PSU or GPU. I'm going to have to take them out of the case and hold them far away from each other to determine.

This is by far the most annoying and confusing PC issue I've ever dealt with all these years. Thanks for your kind help, also.
Power supply Expert

Are you using external hard drives to load your operating system on? That's what it sounds like and explains why it is so slow/freezing. USB is only 480mbps max transfer, while internals are 1.5, 3 or 6 gbps! Don't try to diagnose with an external. If you take a straw and put it to your ear when the fan speeds up, hold it close to the GPU then the PSU and it can help isolate which is making the noise.
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scottiemedic said:
Are you using external hard drives to load your operating system on? That's what it sounds like and explains why it is so slow/freezing. USB is only 480mbps max transfer, while internals are 1.5, 3 or 6 gbps! Don't try to diagnose with an external. If you take a straw and put it to your ear when the fan speeds up, hold it close to the GPU then the PSU and it can help isolate which is making the noise.

I will try this straw method.

Initially I was using both GoFlex drives for internal. I had done a good bit of research before hand, and noticed a lot of people were just taking out the Barracuda Green 1TB 7200rpm from these externals. I've rarely tried it with the USB, just to see it load as external on my Hitachi. My idea was to just use the internal. I installed W7 fine on both, but once the video drivers and sound drivers came to both drives began to beep, not isolated to what I'm doing, it comes randomly or if I change the resolution or anything it will beep and then hang for 2 minutes, then resume. Same time, same situation with both new drives. Research seems to indicate a stuck head in the HDD, but the chance of it happening to two in a row leads me to think it either isn't a HDD error, or both were dropped off the shelf they were on.

ko888 said:
What is the make and model of the components in your system?

CPU, motherboard, graphics card, power supply unit, ..., etc.

E8400 Core 2 Duo, GTX 460 SE 1GB, 700W, 4 gigs, P5K-VM ASUS motherboard.

I've just formatted the hard drive and run scans and such on it. I've never updated my BIOS before or SATA or anything like that, I have a heap of updates for motherboard and I'm reinstalling windows after I check my CPU voltages and all of that. I'm hoping it works out.
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