[SOLVED] EVGA P2 chirp/tick that comes and goes randomly

[fishyjack]

Specs:
Windows 10
EVGA 750 P2 (about 10ish months old)
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max II (1 year old)
Ryzen 5 3600 (stock cooler) (1 year)
16 gigs Corsair Vengeance (1 year)
Gigabyte GTX 970 (4+ years old)
Samsung 870 250&2000 gb SSD (250 is 1 year, 2000 is about 7 months)
Tripp lite isobar 2-6 surge protector (1 year)
No overclocking

About several days ago (on May 28th specifically), I noticed my PSU making rapid, albeit fairly quiet chirping noises. It follows a fairly consistent pattern, for a bit of time it’ll be several ticks a second before eventually settling into a rhythm of about 1 tick per second. When I say ‘fairly quiet’ I mean I can only hear the ticks when my ear is close to the back grate. With my ear 3-4 inches from the grate I can hear it, however it’s faint. If I turn my face so my nose is facing the back of the psu grate the sound disappears, I only hear it when my ear is trained on it.

I’ve recorded the sound best I could, it persists with the PSU fan off.

https://soundcloud.com/gongoozler%2Fpsunoise

View: https://soundcloud.com/gongoozler/psunoise/s-urZjB3TBB7C?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing


Even with the PSU fan off the chirps/ticks were still a bit obscured by PC white noise. It’s impossible to hear but the chirps are accompanied by a high pitch buzzing, however that itself is extremely faint and afaik it’s always been there as some sort of normal sound or light coil whine.

I also tried to pinpoint where the sound is coming from in the PSU using a paper towel roll but it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from a specific area. IDK if it’s just ranging volumes of the chirps or sound traveling strangely but it sounds like it’s coming from different areas in the unit.

The volume/frequency of the ticks don’t seem to change when under load. I’ve checked my PSU voltages and they appear to be normal.

https://imgur.com/zOpMIsl

View: https://i.imgur.com/zOpMIsl.png
(voltages from under load back to idle.)

I believe PSU temperatures are safe as the PSU fan barely revs up even under load and the back grate generally feels slightly warmer than ambient room temp (about 75f/24c right now). It feels as if the fan sticks to between 150-450 RPM, idle or under load. There are no strange/concerning smells emanating from the PSU.

This sound persisted for a few hours on May 28th, then disappeared completely. I’ve been keeping an eye on things and haven’t experienced any crashes/BSODs/shutdowns/etc. PSU was back to being silent for a couple days until June 3rd, the ticks started up again. Same situation as the 28th of May.

On both occurrences I noticed the ticks/chirps start after having been watching youtube/streams on google chrome for a few hours. IDK if that’s remotely relevant or just coincidence. It’s just odd that I can play Skyrim/Fallout4/Overwatch for hours and the PSU is silent, but I decide to watch a 3 hour letsplay compilation in 480p and it starts to chirp for hours.

When I completely shut off my PC, the chirping persisted albeit much quieter. It was accompanied by a quiet high pitch squeal that got quieter after a few seconds. I'm hoping the squeal was just a residual charge/coil whine.
The chirping remained though, I switched off the psu and the sound stopped. I switch it back on and it starts again. So I turn it off again, unplug it and check for scorching just in case. Both the plug and port are clean, cool and don't stink so I plug it back in, turn the psu back on and the noise stays gone this time. I have not turned my PC back on yet.

 

[Lutfij]

You could relocate to another wall outlet in your crib and see if the noise you speak of is absent. The chirping that you're referring to with regards to the audio clip made me think you probably have an HDD or that you have dirt or debris on one of your fans. Sadly, EVGA tends to have hit or miss units within their own lineups, whereby the most expensive unit in their portfolio can be the best unit reviewers have seen until one end user ends up with a bad unit.

You might want to also keep EVGA and your seller in the loop regarding the matter...see if you can initiate an RMA with the evidence you've gathered up. For the sake of relevance, what BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

 

[fishyjack]

You could relocate to another wall outlet in your crib and see if the noise you speak of is absent. The chirping that you're referring to with regards to the audio clip made me think you probably have an HDD or that you have dirt or debris on one of your fans. Sadly, EVGA tends to have hit or miss units within their own lineups, whereby the most expensive unit in their portfolio can be the best unit reviewers have seen until one end user ends up with a bad unit.

You might want to also keep EVGA and your seller in the loop regarding the matter...see if you can initiate an RMA with the evidence you've gathered up. For the sake of relevance, what BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

No HDDs present, just a pair of SSDs. I recently went through a cleaned out dust in my rig, the dust filters do their job well so there's generally very little dust build up.

RE wall outlets: This is tricky. My home was built in the early 2000s and I'm pretty sure it's electrical layout was never updated. Our house specifically seems to have been built by the lowest possible bidder as we have outlets in different postal codes that are linked to one another. By by what looks like complete randomness, one of these outlet's is chosen as like .. the "lead outlet" and if it that one goes, the others connected to it go dark until it's fixed. Funnily enough the "lead outlet" that controls like 60% of the lights in the house is in my room, right next to my bed. We've had to manually map out which outlets are usable for PCs/high power consumption and which are not. My room has 2 of these, one close to the door and one in far off bumcrapland in the corner of the room. That outlet we've had to seal up because it's an air leak. I don't feel comfortable plugging my PC into a socket with hot air blasting it. Unfortunately we've had to deal with these problems because getting an electrician out to replace all the outlets and look at our wiring is a bit expensive right now.

I did contact EVGA and sent them the evidence and they've said it's most likely coil whine, that sometimes frequencies jumping around the PCB can make a quiet chirp/tick rather than a buzz/squeal. They said since it is very quiet, it shouldn't be an issue. EVGA's willing to do an RMA if the sound gets worse/louder.

As for BIOS version I believe is 7C02vH4.

Booting up the PC today, I noticed the sound was there for maybe 20-30 seconds, I didn't hear it during boot up but on the Win10 desktop it started and stopped as Windows was doing it's wake-up routine. A bit quieter than before and it went away shortly. ATM PSU is back to being silent for now.

 

[Vic 40]

There was a thread on jonnyguru which had this title,

EVGA T2 Supernova Clicky psu and why it is normal.

jonnyguru.com is gone,and i cannot remember exactly what it was, but think your psu does the same for the same reason and it should be fine as long as the sound doesn't bother you. Think it has to do with the conversion from 115/230V to what the pc needs and the parts that do that can make this sound to keep it simple especially when low loads are applied as far as i can remember.

 

[fishyjack]

There was a thread on jonnyguru which had this title,



jonnyguru.com is gone,and i cannot remember exactly what it was, but think your psu does the same for the same reason and it should be fine as long as the sound doesn't bother you. Think it has to dow ith the conversion form 115/230V to what the pc needs and the parts that do that can make this sound to keep it simple especially when low loads are applied as far as i can remember.

That does make sense to me. Both times these sounds started, it was under a continuous low load. I poked around on youtube and found people with G2's experiencing something very similar (at least noise-wise). From what I understand, the G2, P2 and T2 were all made by Super Flower and are basically just modified Leadex platforms so it makes sense they'd well, behave similarly. As of posting this, the sound hasn't come back. Guess all I can do rn is keep an eye/ear on it and if it gets too loud, go for an RMA.

EDIT: Lol, started watching a youtube video that was about 80 minutes and the sound has returned about 25 minutes in. Still quiet tho. So yeah, def feels like a constant low load is what's triggering it.

 

[Vic 40]

Yeah think it's fine as long as the sound isn't too loud and it gets bothersome.