PC Speaker Buzzing Randomly

cosmicspacehead

Distinguished
Feb 5, 2013
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Hey all,
My PC has been acting up for a few months now.
Most of the time, while gaming( or even just virus scanning on a hot day), the internal PC speaker starts buzzing on an off. Eventually, it'll just stay on solid until I stop what I'm doing.
Sometimes, during gaming, it will stutter during the intermittent buzzing, but once it's solid buzzing, it seems to run normally, just loud. Lol
Occasionally, it'll buzz for a second when booting up from cold too.

Originally, I put it down to overheating, so I got a new case for Christmas at set it up. It has oodles more air flow.
But, it's still doing it, just takes a bit longer.

I used Open Hardware Monitor to check tempuratures, and with both my very (very very) old and new case, everything is quite (or very) cool, except for one motherboard sensor, which is always hovering around 80°C when the buzzing starts.

My PC is made up of these components:

AMD FX 8320 (stock speeds)
Gigabyte GA 970A UD3P
G.Skill 2x4GB 2133mhz DDR3 RAM (running at 1600mhz)
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GPU (Stock speeds)
WD 1Tb Caviar blue 7200rpm HDD.
Hiper 620w PSU (quite old now)
Samsung DVD+/-RW

The new case is a Zalman Z3 Plus,
With 2x 120mm intakes, 2x 120mm top exhausts, and 1x 120mm rear exhaust. (Overkill cooling!)
And my CPU is cooled by an Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro. And it does a good job, keeping it around 60°C under load.

I've read somewhere it could be VRMs or the northbridge overheating.
Although, I couldn't find a diagram of my motherboard showing where the NB actually is. Lol

But, could it also be my PSU getting old?
Why would it buzz from cold? (Not like a post beep, a buzz)

I'm quite confused with this one.

If it is either my VRMs or NB, how can I attached a fan to these?
My case doesn't have quite enough room around the back for a rear mounted fan like I've seen.
I've seen people use double sided tape... But this doesn't seem safe, or secure. Lol

If it is the PSU, that's an easy fix, but I'd rather not spend £40 if i don't have too.

On a final note, making me lean towards a heat issue more, if i took the case side off my old case, and pointed a 14" deskfan at it. Eventually it would stop buzzing.
However, I own a cat, so leaving the case side off isn't a solution. Lol
 
Solution
Hey, I found the issue, the CPU was overheating while under stress, but very rapidly cooling down when Alt-tabbing out, so looked like it was just at 60°C. When infact it was hitting 72°C.
When I last fitted the CPU cooler, I believe I applied a little too much thermal paste.

I just re-applied it, and now my temps are ~15°C lower. Lol
The CPU cooler has a maximum heat dissipation capacity of 150W, that's not a lot of headroom when you are looking at a 125W TDP processor especially since the cooler's recommended TDP is 115W.

The Hiper looks more like an anagramed version of a Raidmax PSU.

40Quid for a PSU is too little IMHO, you should be investing in a quality, reliable, branded unit for long ownership time and ofc to compute without worrying about down time. I'm looking at the PSU as the culprit, though how old is it? If pointing a 120mm/140mm fan at the chipset heatsink alleviates the issue then your problem is worth far less than 40quid.
 
Hey, I found the issue, the CPU was overheating while under stress, but very rapidly cooling down when Alt-tabbing out, so looked like it was just at 60°C. When infact it was hitting 72°C.
When I last fitted the CPU cooler, I believe I applied a little too much thermal paste.

I just re-applied it, and now my temps are ~15°C lower. Lol
 
Solution