• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Power supply chirping?

C

Crucible1001

[H]ard|Gawd
2FA
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
1,615
At least I think it is coming from that direction. The location of the sound is somewhere around the cpu to power supply.

When I turn on PC 2 in my sig, it boots up fine with no chirp noises. If I stress all 4 cores, it will start chirping. If I stop stessing the cpu, the chirping goes away immediately. The sound is a high pitched whine that goes in and out. I tried stopping the PSU and the CPU fans while the computer was running and it did not help. Not sure if it is the fans causing it. Another odd thing is that after stressing the cores for around 5 minutes, the chirping just goes away and won't come back till I restart the computer. The power supply and video card are old ones that I have used for years without an issue. New parts are the CPU, MB, RAM.
 
Crucible1001 said:
At least I think it is coming from that direction. The location of the sound is somewhere around the cpu to power supply.

When I turn on PC 2 in my sig, it boots up fine with no chirp noises. If I stress all 4 cores, it will start chirping. If I stop stessing the cpu, the chirping goes away immediately. The sound is a high pitched whine that goes in and out. I tried stopping the PSU and the CPU fans while the computer was running and it did not help. Not sure if it is the fans causing it. Another odd thing is that after stressing the cores for around 5 minutes, the chirping just goes away and won't come back till I restart the computer. The power supply and video card are old ones that I have used for years without an issue. New parts are the CPU, MB, RAM.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this one has been covered and never really definitively answered for quite some time. You did throw a different twist into the mix, if I understand what you said the Vid card and PSU had worked together previously with no issue.

The noise has been traced to either the PSU inductor coils and or way out of spec CAPS on the video card. That finding was by me and a few more qualified people.

I think we can rule out the RAM, the CPU might be adding just enough stress to induce he problem although it is not the direct cause. The motherboard might be involved simply because it changed another variable, voltage regulation.

Now, what to do. First, the noise is not harmful and is not indicative of a defective PSU. The Video card manufacture may or may not consider the problem is with them.

I can say with some certainly the issue seems to be far less an issue with eVGA cards.

I have no doubt Corsair would replace the PSU with no question however that probably won't be a fix.

The noise goes away under stress because heat is causing expansion and the expansion of parts stops the whine. I'd see if the Video card is RMAable (my word) and start there.

Oh, one last thing on noise descriptions. Chirp? Bird like sound. Whine? Wife or GF type sound.:p

Luck man;)
 
It is a high pitched noise that can last from 2 seconds to a .1 seconds. It sounds like a capacitor. It lasts longer when I first use full load on all 4 cores. The chirps get shorter and happen less often over time and eventually go away within 5 minutes. There is also a very low crackling noise along with the chirps. It almost sounds like an older hard drive at work. I put my ear literally inside my computer when the noise was occurring. I am 100% certain it is coming from the PSU or the top part of the motherboard.

The graphics card and PSU were taken out of PC 1 in my sig and placed on a shelf when I upgraded 3 months ago. You were looking at the from PC in the sig for the PSU. It is an old antec out of warranty. Every other part I have is still under warranty. I just started using them again 7 days ago. The chirping noise did not start until 2 days ago. I use 100% full load on all 4 cores about 15 hours a day and have for the last 7 days. I shut down the computer at night. I've had it running a total of 100 or so hours without a single crash, blue screen, or lock up.

Any idea why it occurs only on full CPU load then goes away after 5 mins? The power supply handled more watts before without this issue. Could it be the MB? It is a brand new one from newegg. I could always have it replaced if need be. I bought that along with the 2x2GB ram and phenom from newegg last week.
 
Crucible1001 said:
It is a high pitched noise that can last from 2 seconds to a .1 seconds. It sounds like a capacitor. It lasts longer when I first use full load on all 4 cores. The chirps get shorter and happen less often over time and eventually go away within 5 minutes. There is also a very low crackling noise along with the chirps. It almost sounds like an older hard drive at work. I put my ear literally inside my computer when the noise was occurring. I am 100% certain it is coming from the PSU or the top part of the motherboard.

The graphics card and PSU were taken out of PC 1 in my sig and placed on a shelf when I upgraded 3 months ago. You were looking at the from PC in the sig for the PSU. It is an old antec out of warranty. Every other part I have is still under warranty. I just started using them again 7 days ago. The chirping noise did not start until 2 days ago. I use 100% full load on all 4 cores about 15 hours a day and have for the last 7 days. I shut down the computer at night. I've had it running a total of 100 or so hours without a single crash, blue screen, or lock up.

Any idea why it occurs only on full CPU load then goes away after 5 mins? The power supply handled more watts before without this issue. Could it be the MB? It is a brand new one from newegg. I could always have it replaced if need be. I bought that along with the 2x2GB ram and phenom from newegg last week.
Click to expand...

When dealing with a noise, you are there, I am here. I did speculate in my post, based on my own experience, what might be or contribute to the noise.

Try this, a paper towel tube or make a tube from printer paper rolling it lengthwise, three strips of tape will hold it together.

You have just created the poor man's stethoscope. Hold one end against your ear and move the other end from component to component. You will be able to isolate the location of your noise if not the exact offending part.

Let me know how you make out;)
 
It is definitely coming from the PSU. It makes noise when I use full GPU load with ATI tool, just no chirps. It does that crackling noise I mentioned. Anyways, I recorded the sound when it is under full cpu/gpu load. It seems to get worse when I put more stress on the PSU. Want me to email you the sound?

The PSU has seen about 2 years of use 24/7 with only a few shut downs.
 
Crucible1001 said:
It is definitely coming from the PSU. It makes noise when I use full GPU load with ATI tool, just no chirps. It does that crackling noise I mentioned. Anyways, I recorded the sound when it is under full cpu/gpu load. It seems to get worse when I put more stress on the PSU. Want me to email you the sound?

The PSU has seen about 2 years of use 24/7 with only a few shut downs.
Click to expand...

Ok, narrowing the sound to one thing helps.

If you were to scroll back to past threads you would see you are a member of a pretty big club, that's not to make you feel better but hey, a club is good right?

While your problem is not rampant it is an ongoing issue for many. If we were only talking about the whine I'd bet on the video card being the cause. In this case the crackling noise falls outside the norms of this situation. So, in this case I would start by contacting the PSU manufacture and explain the whine and crackling sound then request an RMA.

If the PSU in question is the 750 listed in your sig they will take care of you pretty much no questions asked.

IF you still have the problem with a new PSU I fear it's going to come down to bad out of spec parts on your video card. RMA would in order in that case.

Now the bad part, there is no guarantee that in the end it will all work without some whine. Ever since nVIDIA and ATI went to these newer high current video cards there have been numerous issues with this whole noise thing. Many are blaming the PSUs however in my opinion the problem leans more towards the video cards and poor component quality control. My comments are based on personal experience after checking some voltages on a stressed 260 against a known good 260. My customer didn't want to deal with RMA, again, so he had me replace the suspect caps. The result was, no whine.:)
 
"PC 2" is the one having issues. It is the Phenom 9600, Antec Smart Power 2.0 500w, 8800 GTS 640 one. That power supply could be having issues. It is rated for 80,000 hours and I used it for around 17,000 hours. It also had a huge QC problem for the months after I bought it based on the newegg reviews.

I may just buy a new one anyways. If it turns out not to be the PSU, then I have a backup.
 
Crucible1001 said:
"PC 2" is the one having issues. It is the Phenom 9600, Antec Smart Power 2.0 500w, 8800 GTS 640 one. That power supply could be having issues. It is rated for 80,000 hours and I used it for around 17,000 hours. It also had a huge QC problem for the months after I bought it based on the newegg reviews.

I may just buy a new one anyways. If it turns out not to be the PSU, then I have a backup.
Click to expand...

Not to spend your money but yes, that's a good direction to move.

All my machines run 24/7-365 which is why I tend to recommend going to a larger PSU, I'm a big believer that cooler is better.

Luck:)
 
I was thinking low watt to save on power costs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817371005

This one is an antec earthwatts 380w. It gets some of the best ratings on newegg and has two 12v rails. The machine using it has very little power needs. Phenom 9600, 8800 GTS 640, 2 DDR2 sticks, 1 hard drive, 1 DVD rom, 2 fans. I could save quite a bit over the course of a year.

It can't pull over 250 watts with those parts.

Edit: I already ordered it. I'll update this post if the chirping continues. That and probably send the motherboard back to newegg after I test the video card and ram in my other computer.
 
Just wanted to update that replacing the power supply fixed the problem. I replaced it with the Antec earth watts 380. I guess the old power supply was just passed its time.
 
Crucible1001,

I have two Antec Earthwatts 380 myself and I think they're very good. I have setups that are similar to what you've listed and it's been a great match considering the power demands I have. Hope you have good luck with them too.
 
The 'chirping', or whine is from the coils on the PCB. When powered, coils always vibrate. Whenever this vibration enters the audible frequency range, you can actually hear it's there. This noise is _not_ harmful in any way, and the quickest way to fix it is to put some glue or similar on it, which will silence the coil instantly.

Capacitors do not make noise unless they're being stressed beyond tolerance and/or blowing up. VRMs on certain modern videocards have been identified as causing feedback on the PSU's rails, causing noise from the coils in the PSU. Capacitors may also affect the frequency of the coils, hence why replacing them may have shifted the noise to an inaudible range.

Just remember: generally noise means moving parts :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top