Problem: intermittent click .. then click coming from tower

[Scotty S-15]

ASUS tower, 3 +/- yr. old. This is what I'm hearing.

click, one second pause, then same click.
These events at least 20 minutes to an hour or two apart, seems more likely to happen once machine is running a few hours. This has been going on for a few weeks, at first happening ever few days, now more often. My days of denial are over.

I've read similar threads, most suggesting imminent HDD failures, I had that happen a few years back, sounded different, luckily caught it in time. Sounds more like a mechanical relay energizing & releasing, but nothing like that in there! Or a thermal circuit breaker? But it runs without a glitch during the clicks.

Also, hopefully unrelated, during the last few days the computer has shut down a few times while unattended. Not a normal shutdown. I'm thinking it's my UPS because on one occasion, the UPS was OFF, had to turn it back on. That was weird. BTW, the clicking isn't coming from there...

I'm going to take the UPS out of the circuit right now to eliminate that possibility.

Thanks for any thoughts......

 

[smorizio]

run hdtune and vendor test tool to check your hard drive. your power supply would have the relay click sound.

 

[Scotty S-15]

Thank you! Ran HD tune, clicking stopped. Going forward, I'll be paying more attention to my HDD.
And for sure, the clicking was from my PS. I realized that when I shut it down, and the last sound I heard was that same click, just one time, from my machine.

Curious though, why the HDD being funky would make the relay in the PS drop in & out. ?
Thanks again.