Chirp from inside my pc tower

B

Black Panther

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Joined
Jun 4, 2007
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It's a bit difficult to describe, and it like only happens once during the time when the pc is switched on, or none at all (or maybe I miss it by not being in the room when it happens). It happens after the pc has been running for more than one hour or two and only happens once.

The sound is like a "tssk", sharp, short. Loud. Similar to the sound you make when you 'click' your thumb and third finger. But sounding somewhat 'metallic'... or maybe it's more like the sound when one throws a small pebble at a glass window. I think the best description (don't laugh lol!) is that of a chirp of a hungry baby bird. It's loud enough to startle me.

Otherwise pc works normally, no problems at all (except for the DVD drive refusing to burn but it's always been like that).

What do you think that noise is?
I'm thinking.... capacitor? :( and am hoping not...

I've checked inside my pc but caps seem ok unless I missed something? And there aren't any chirping birds inside either... :p
 
I can understand the metallic sound of a pebble hitting glass.. but I don't know how that sounds anything like a chirp of a baby bird.

Those two things are seem contradicting of each other.

Though the thumb and third finger I can relate to, that small click or snap, it sounds a lot like my laptops hard drive's head being locked into place. If it's really silent, I can hear the hard drive lock the head, when I first noticed it I freaked out cause I thought my HD was dying.

So it might be your hard drive, that's maybe what I'm thinking - but I'm no expert on hardware failures..

Sure it's not coming from your speakers?
 
My computer makes a 'chirp' every time I shut down. I am pretty sure it is the voltage alarm on my 8800GTX trying to tell me that the power is off right before it loses power itself. I don't know if the 8800GT has one of these alarms, but if so, that may be something to look at.
 
lol I understand the confusion of my apparently funny post. Let's just say it's a chirp. A very loud chirp, as loud as a pebble hitting a glass window :D . I keep my Z5500's switched off unless I'm gaming/listening to music or playing dvd, so I'm sure it's from inside the tower. And it's the loudness that worried me. I mean once my husband was watching tv in the same room and we heard the chirp. And he asked me what the heck was that...
Although my pc performs fine otherwise. I just wanted to know if any of you guys could diagnose, so in the even that my pc doesn't boot I would know which part to change.
 
Sounds like some of my old TV's, that would do that when some material or another inside would expand from heat when it was on, then it would pop again after it cooled off. Maybe a metal panel is expanding and slapping something or popping out when it warps. You could try pulling all the guts out and seeing if the noise is still there without the case.
 
I recently was inside my box doing some hdd things and pinpointed the chirp. It seems to come from the mobo. Still not sure what it does. Keep in mind i have an old system. AMD athlon 2.2 ghz socket 754, agp etc etc.
 
Is there a motherboard speaker or buzzer? They can be pretty small. I can't think of why it would make a sound during normal operation but that's what came to mind first for me. Check BIOS settings to disable it maybe?
 
If it happens every time you power up your system, then it's probably your motherboard telling you that it POSTed fine. I bet if you pull your memory out and power on the system then you'll get a lot more 'chirps' :p
 
I hate that chirp. I had that too, and infact asked about that here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1057977

My problem was that excess heat was causing one of my toroidal transformer would vibrate. If you want to get rid of that sound, you should probably find a way to improve your cooling system. I looked at the motherboard's temperature monitor and the area around the CPU was being heated up. This caused my transformer to chirp up. After reseating my heatsink, the sound doesn't happen as much unless my CPU is running really heavy.

Either get a fan, rearrange your cooling system, or get a new mobo... OR possibly nail polish on the loose parts. Either way it's problem not a problem as long as you don't mind the noise.
It supposedly happens when the mobo wears out, but my new mobo (new at the time) already came with an unruly transformer.
 
The inductors could be making a chirp with a large step load. The heat should not be effecting them directly very much but may effect how they are driven. Yet motherboard manufacturers often try to cut corners everywhere they can so anything is possible.
 
A friend of mine had a Seagate drive failing. It would make the chirp on startup. For some reason even though it did make the chirp, it recorded no SMART errors.
 
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