Buzzing Noise

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

My computer is making an odd buzzing noise, and which spiked a few minutes ago. It seems to be working fine, temperature normal, CPU and memory usage normal, but the buzzing continues. Any ideas on what this may be?

[Mikeus Caesar]

Maybe something got trapped in the fan cover and is making a buzzing noise from hitting the tips of the fan?

Either that, or there's a flying insect like a bee or fly trapped in there.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Might be the case fan. They enjoy making pathetic noises yet posing no problems. Must be a sort of mechanical androposis.

ADD: Hey Mikeus!
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[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Well, it was running silently mid-use, then suddenly started to buzz, loudly, and there was a small noise I couldn't identify, and then I flipped the power switch. It just started again, a louder buzzing/humming noise. Built up, died away. It's not the fans, I turned them off and it continued. It sounds almost like a jigsaw or skillsaw cutting through a thin piece of wood. When I power off the computer, it gradually dies down to a slow whine (like powering off a power saw), and then goes away. It doesn't happen with the computer on standby. I'm not sure if my fan controller has power over the PSU fan, so that might be it, but I don't know.

[Whacker]

Just to be clear... This sound isn't coming from your speakers, is it? Or is it mechanical, from inside the case?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Just to be clear... This sound isn't coming from your speakers, is it? Or is it mechanical, from inside the case?

It is most definately from the case.

[caravel]

Check the graphics card fan and cpu fan as well. The graphics card fans in particular are often the cheaper sleeve type fans and will start to gyrate noisily after a year or so.

[Papewaio]

Sounds more like the PSU.

It could be a loose connection between anything that is spinning and its housing / cradle to the case.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I thought it was the PSU at first too, but the sound was coming from the region of the hard drive, at completely the opposite end of the case.

[Ramses II CP]

If it's the hard drive it will, in my experience, fail fairly soon. Noisy drives are nearly dead drives. YMMV. Keep good back-ups and have a look at your warranty; every so often a HD rolls off the line with so small a fault that nobody notices until it fails at the end user. You might've just gotten unlucky, but your warranty should cover it.

If you suspect it might just be vibration in the case try switching drive bays, or tightening up screws.

My first suspect would've been the fans too, but usually if you open up the case and it's a fan you can tell immediately where the noise is coming from. It's a good thing when a fan fails in a noisy fashion, it's only dangerous when they go completely quiet and you're not watching the temp.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

My C drive backup wizard requires me to insert a floppy to make a floppy disk. I don't have a floppy drive. How can I make the disc?

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

I've seen this before. Your rig is full of bees.

Move away from the machine and run, run for all you're worth!

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

By the way, my hard drive just stood up to multiple stress tests, including one from nVidia. If anything's wrong with it, it's physical.

I am actually thinking at this moment that it may be the fan in front of the drive, which would explain the noise. I'll have to test that out.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I'm not sure but can Daemon Tools or something of the sort fake a directory as a floppy drive?
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[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

This means I've backed up my entire drive - but I haven't got any way to boot it in the event of a failure.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Try Nero. It has a very neat full drive backup feature, which builds your backup on a botable DVD/CD.

I'm running on my same years old setup for three hard drives and two mobos.
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[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

It just so happens that I have Nero. I'm using the backup tool now. It's a beautiful program.


Thanks. :)