Help Choosing a Pre-built Gaming PC Please

Hardware and technical stuff
641

Friends, I could use some help. A couple of days ago, the PC began making this weird, intermittent sound. Something like a hard drive spinning, but the thing has no platter hard drives. I’ve looked all around the thing but don’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ve yet to dust its innards, but I plan to do that this weekend.

I took a video of it, and the sound happens around 9 and 22 seconds.

Any idea what this sound might be and what I can do about it? Thank you.

642

You have a EVGA card, are the fan’s turning off? Check the Precision X1 software.

I googled, and it might be that the fans turn off and never turn back on. Are you noticing any issues in games?

Here is the thread I am reading: https://forums.evga.com/2080ti-ftw3-fan-problems-m2873395-p2.aspx

As you mentioned, there are not a lot of moving parts inside that pc.

643

Don’t think it’s the video card. Just launched Wildlands, all three fans spun up and seem to be working, according to their EVGA Precision.

644

Might have to crack it open and check inside, do you see a renegade wire being nipped by a fan anywhere?

I had a wire on my CPU cooler nip the fan once randomly, fixed it with a paper clip. :P

645

I’ve yet had time to do that, so I’ve just scoured it with a flashlight. I didn’t see anything getting near a fan. I should be able to open it up tomorrow or Saturday for a better look.

646

Are you sure that’s not coming from your speakers? Sounds more like a speaker noise than a case noise, at least from the video you posted. Try powering off the speakers and see if it goes away. If it is the speakers, some times just replugging in the jacks will address it.

647

I turned off the speakers, still heard it. Wish it were that simple.

648

Turned off as in completely powered off? Heck, I’d tried unplugging the speakers if you haven’t done that.

I’ve never heard a mechanical noise even remotely like that, especially with the inconsistency. A wire hitting a fan has a much higher frequency. Any moving part in a PC that is causing noise will have a higher frequency than that. Powering on and off of disk drives and the GPU fan are the only things that I can think of that might have any chance of that frequency, but even that is highly unlikely.

EDIT: Forgot to mention: check that your built in monitor speakers are disabled. I tried powering off the monitors, too. Basically, unplug the case from all but power and see if it still makes sounds. Finally, it could be the case speaker. Try unplugging that from the MB, too.

Weird.

649

Yeah, that’s why I’m so baffled as well.

650

That’s my plan for tomorrow or Saturday. Unplug everything, take the case apart, power it up and see if it’s still making the noise, then maybe I can narrow in on what’s doing it.

651

All I hear is coil whine.

652

What’s that?

653

Wait, do you mean the popping sound?

654

I suppose you could call it that. It sounds like a pop/scratch.

It makes sense. I had to flash a new firmware the other day for the video card. The sounds began around that time. It’s also too infrequent to be a fan. It also explains why I can’t actually see a cause.

655

That doesn’t sound mechanical, at least what i can hear from the recording. Sounds like feedback in a speaker.

Maybe the motherboard’s internal speaker is popping from some electrical feedback?

What tasks cause the computer to do this?

656

No tasks that I can determine. It just seems to happen every 15ish seconds.

657

So here are a couple of ideas; i mean, with the caveat that it’s very hard to diagnose things remotely from a 25 second clip. So i’ll include my “speculation” with it.

A) Is this the internal motherboard speaker?

  1. Is it building up charge from some ungrounded connection?
    Ground the motherboard/case by opening the case and grabbing the metal box of the case itself (not the motherboard) and ideally using grounding clamps or worse come to worse, just grabbing it yourself and holding it for several minutes. Does the popping stop? Can you feel any charge (obviously, stop holding if you do).
  2. Is the motherboard speaker malfuctioning? Can you disconnect it/disable it and see if the popping stops?

B) Is this a periodic rubbing of a fan, somewhere?

  1. Check the case to see if any loose wires are very very close to moving fans. The wires aren’t getting “sucked” in so they need to be at rest very close already.

C) Can you determine from where the sound is coming?

  1. Open the case and listen to from where the sound is emanating. Surely you can isolate where it’s coming from.
658

Yeah I’m gonna open it up this weekend and power it on to see if I can narrow down the sound. I’m running a 3D Mark stress test right now to see if that either points to a problem or helps burn in the card if it is coil whine.

659

Welp the stress test passed with flying colors, so whatever it is, it can’t be THAT serious.

660

Ok, initially I thought the pops were just from bad audio in the clip. I don’t know what’s causing that.

Coil whine is the high-pitched sound. It’s not a problem per se, as long as it doesn’t bother you.