High pitched whine driving me nuts!

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:50 pm

I've got a not-silent-but-pretty-good PC that I've been running for a few years now. Very recently, it has developed an extremely high pitched whine that had all the markings of "coil whine" from the power supply. It was an aging, budget Thermaltake so I wasn't too upset and simply decided to buy a new one. Picked up an Antec Earthwatts 430W.

I just got it installed and the whine still persists. It is extremely high pitched and not a constant sound. It's constantly happening, just not one prolonged sound. It sounds more like "beeep, beeep, beeep, beeeeeeep, beep, beep, beeeeeep, beeep."

It's making me nuts. I have very sensitive hearing and it's on that extremely high end that actually hurts a little bit. Before I rip my whole computer apart again and unplug each component, one at a time in the hunt for it, does anyone have any ideas? It's possible that this may have started when I disturbed my case after a prolonged period of leaving it alone, and stirred up a bunch of dust. I've been working with PCs professionally and personally for over 10 years now and I've never heard of dust causing such an electronic-sounding whine.

Thanks!

Specs: AMD64 x2 4200+, Alpine64 heatsink + fan, two Antec Tri-Cool fans, passive Leadtek GeForce 6600, Western Digital Caviar 160gb SATA, BenQ 16x DVD burner, 2gb Transcend RAM.

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:23 pm

Incidentally, it also may have coincided with my recent install of Vista. I have only seen one other mention of this in my searching.

mr_plow_king · Post by **mr_plow_king** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:58 pm

well at least you know it's not coming from the power supply. Any other component in your computer could be making that noise. I suggest you start by unplugging the power from each component and stop every fan. you could even try to remove the video card to see if the sound is coming from it

silence · Post by **silence** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:53 pm

This may or may not help you, but my experiences with my current motherboard were very similar. I purchased an Asus Crosshair motherboard a little over a year ago and experienced a very similar high-pitched whine, although the noise in my case was constant rather than a "beep-beep" you describe hearing from your system. I found it extremely difficult to localize the sound because the proximity of other components to the motherboard caused many sonic reflections. With a little luck I was eventually able to modulate then eliminate the sound by increasing the voltage supplied to the "SB PLL" module, the apparent source of the sound (I could most closely localize the sound to the Southbridge chip itself, so this made a good bit of sense). I ended up RMA'ng that first motherboard and as it turns out the replacement motherboard actually made the same exact noise, which was also fixed in exactly the same way. I haven't had any further issues with the motherboard, but I thought this would be worth a mention. Anyway, good luck and take care.

-Dom

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:18 am

Thanks for the suggestions.

So far I've determined it's not any of the fans, since the noise does not occur in the BIOS and the fans are all running when I'm booted into the BIOS.

I also killed my overclock and disabled my sound card in search of it, neither of those helped.

The search continues... I'll probably actually pull my case out and see if I can locate the specific place the noise is coming from. I guess at least I've got a backup PSU now - always look on the bright side, right?

yamahaSHO · Post by **yamahaSHO** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:30 am

I have a high pitched frequency coming from my motherboard as well (MSI P6N Diamond). With everything closed (P180B), the noise can only escape out of the back fan hole. I live with the noise, though I'm wondering if some sound deadening material will help absorb the noise. Maybe even something outside of the case at the back of the fan may muffle the noise.

With that said, with the panels on and the door closed, the noise out the back is barely noticeable unless you are near the back of the case. I hate dealing with RMA'ing items, so unless something fails, I'll stick with this, especially since the other user RMA'd his motherboard and has the same whine.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:39 pm

Since nobody else is mentioning this...

A really high-pitched whine is nearly always an inductor - that's a coil of wire wrapped around a ferrite rod. Ferrite rods tend to be "magnetostrictive", meaning they change shape when magnetic lines of flux are applied. These coils are found in the PSU and also in the CPU power-regulation area, and in the GPU power regulation area if you have such (I don't because I use integrated graphics).

There are some postings about reducing or eliminating the whine by covering the coil with a substance. Don't do this if you plan to RMA; it's a warranty-buster.

This subject comes up often enough that it perhaps warrants a sticky. edit: see this thread.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:11 am

It's your hard drive. Is it a western digital perhaps??

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 12:21 pm

See my next post down.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 1:30 pm

As were all having just one guess, I wil play along as well, disconnect your LAN cable and play a game of cards for 5 minutes, then let us know (once you plug it back in that is).

Andy

WR304 · Post by **WR304** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:15 pm

I've actually been trying to sort out something similar on my brother's PC (Windows XP Pro). It has an intermittent high pitched whine which I thought may be a hard drive.

As mentioned in binary visions's original post the noise doesn't happen in the BIOS.

After replacing both the motherboard and power supply of the PC today the noise was still there.

andyb's post was a good pointer. Unplugging the network cable made no difference but it did show up what the problem was in my case.

The PC has a Microsoft USB Wireless optical mouse. Every time I moved the mouse the PC would start squealing.

Simply swapping the Microsoft mouse for a Logitech G5 USB mouse I had lying around fixed the problem.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 5:24 pm

I noticed it on my last "test rig" that I use at work day-in day-out (side off), the high pitched squeal was barly audable when using the internet as it would flick on and of dozens of times a second, but when it came to shunting a few gigs of stuff accross the Gigabit network it reared its ugly head and I got a solid wall of evil high pitched whine, it was fortunately directional and I couldnt hear it if I moved just a few inches.

I have heard PSU's (typically when the 5v Standy is failing/failed), laptop power bricks, other random power bricks, mobos when using on-board networking, dial-up modems, mobo's when the CPU is doing a lot of work, integrated mobos when the graphics are being pushed, HDD's, ODD's, FDD's and Zip drives, dont forget mice and good old CRT's, I have yet to hear an LCD whine, but that is only a matter of time, nearly forgot, speakers, subs and a plasma TV.

Narrowing all of that down inside a PC is a pain in the arse, because it could be anything, literally.

Andy