Strange noises coming from tower: clicking, scratching.

[sundayskeptic]

My computer has recently been making some strange noises. I can count on it happening at least a few times every few hours, it's a sort of clicking noise as if a screw is being dropped on the inside. It's not super repetitive, in fact the shortest interval between two clicks has only been about two to five minutes.
Even more worrisome, though, is that just today I heard it make a kind of whirring scratching noise, as well. It's the first time, so not too many details on that.

A few weeks back I assumed the clicking was some cords or zip-ties getting in the fan's way, so I opened it up and moved some of them around. Sure enough, I'm still hearing those clicks so maybe it's not that. For that reason I assume it's the hard drive. Any ideas based on these details?

My set up is this, if it helps.
CPU: Intel I7 7700K
GPU: MSI Radeon RX 480
Storage: Seagate Firecuda 1TB (ST1000DX002)
PSU: SeaSonic M12II 520 Bronze EVO Edition 520W
Motherboard: MSI Z270 PC Mate
Heatsink:Cryorig H7

 

[jr9]

The hard drive is most likely. If you haven't done a recent backup, I recommend doing one as soon as possible. After that, I would try disconnecting the power cable (bigger red cable) from the back of the drive and seeing if the ticking goes away. You see that noise when the actuator arm (or one of them) in an HDD keeps resetting and the drive is getting ready to go.

 

[RolandJS]

I hope you have been doing routine full image backups of your OS and Data partitions onto external media before this noise was apparent. Was the chassis accidentally bumped during operations recently?