[SOLVED] Some part is making a scraping noise/crackling noise, not sure what

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

zephah

Honorable
Jul 4, 2014
33
0
10,530
I built a computer a couple months ago, a few weeks ago I noticed when I had my headphones off this kind of metal "scraping" noise (not sure what else to call it) happening. I recorded it on my phone.

There's kind of this constant bubbling noise, and then scraping intermittently. It doesn't happen always, but it happens frequently enough that I'd say it's happening nearly constantly.

Uploaded a video that hopefully helps someone figure out what this is, as I'm not too familiar with hardware.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwZ7e4Yuoq4


The video is quite loud on my phone but for some reason putting on YouTube has made it considerably quieter.

I've checked to make sure no cables are potentially hitting any fans, no fan is loose, and tried tilting my computer while off for a few minutes as per suggested on some other forum posts about air bubbles with AIO coolers.

Specs are:

H110i RGB cooler
EVGA 2080ti XC Ultra
i9-9900k
asus maximus hero xi
evga supernova 750 g3
 
Solution
You can use precision X from EVGA, or MSI afterburner, to set a custom fan curve so that the fans either kick on at a lower temperature and then stay slow until they reach wherever you want the curve to start upwards, or to simply always be on but at a low speed until a certain temp.

Either way, or however you want to configure the fan profile, you can do that with those utilities. Precision X from EVGA is brand specific and is pretty good these days, or Afterburner will work for pretty much any graphics card and is probably the best graphics card tuning utility out there. Up to you which one you want to use. Both are free.

As for the cooler, if it is making that much noise I'd contact Corsair and ask for a replacement. Pumps are...
If there is no other hard drive then I'd highly suspect this has to be a pump issue. Is the power supply the same age as the rest of the hardware as well? Nothing on this build was used from any previous build?

I would TRIPLE check that there are no cables or wires interferring with any fan blades anywhere as well.
 

zephah

Honorable
Jul 4, 2014
33
0
10,530
Everything is brand new.

Okay so, this may be embarrassing, or just purely an incredible coincidence. But I may have found the connection of the "scraping" noise -- my GPU doesn't appear to have fans always running, but instead must turn on after some amount of load? And right now, they appear to spin for like maybe 5-10 seconds, and then stop, and then spin for 5-10 seconds, and then stop. The noise at least hearing it after it happens, seems to be the fans themselves starting spinning, as it happens every time it begins again (from looking at it.)

Not sure if there's a way to adjust this, if it's faulty fans on the GPU itself, or what.

So just from this line of thinking -- I feel it may be bubbling from the pump itself, just some trapped air bubbles -- and what sounds like scraping is actually just the fans going to start over and over but never actually running consistently.

If that doesn't sound like it could be the issue, I'll keep trying to investigate further.
 
You can use precision X from EVGA, or MSI afterburner, to set a custom fan curve so that the fans either kick on at a lower temperature and then stay slow until they reach wherever you want the curve to start upwards, or to simply always be on but at a low speed until a certain temp.

Either way, or however you want to configure the fan profile, you can do that with those utilities. Precision X from EVGA is brand specific and is pretty good these days, or Afterburner will work for pretty much any graphics card and is probably the best graphics card tuning utility out there. Up to you which one you want to use. Both are free.

As for the cooler, if it is making that much noise I'd contact Corsair and ask for a replacement. Pumps are generally an additional noise factor compared to air coolers, but they shouldn't be so loud you have to wonder what is wrong. If that's the case, then it may simply be defective from the factory. Might be that the loop wasn't bled or filled correctly. Or, it might be normal, and you are just not used to the sound of a loop.
 
Solution

zephah

Honorable
Jul 4, 2014
33
0
10,530
Alrighty. Thanks for the feedback.

I've previously used these coolers before and they've all been silent, so this is definitely an oddity to me.

The noise isn't something indicative of a problem with the fans, right?

Thank you so much for all your help.
 
I wouldn't think so. If you did as COLGeek recommended and ran the Superposition benchmark and the noise did not increase in frequency when the fans spun up faster, which they should have, all of them, at some point, then it makes it improbably. Nothing is impossible though.

You might want to, with the power off, spin each fan by hand and see if you can hear anything when you flick the blades to start spinning. If they are hitting anything or whatever. Might even lightly press your finger against the center of each fan and rotate it around to see if you can feel anything like rough spot in the bearing or motor, etc.

If it's just the gurgling you hear now, then that has to be a pump or loop issue and should be addressed with Corsair.
 

zephah

Honorable
Jul 4, 2014
33
0
10,530
Great, thank you so much :) I'll RMA the cooler and mess with a GPU fan program and just post again in a while if those things don't fix it. Thank you guys for all your help!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.