PC noise

March 6th, 2016, 06:49 PM

Don't you love when your PC starts to make noises that you never did hear before and you are clueless from where it's coming?

Today I noticed some weird horizontal lines on one of my monitors (primary) that would appear and disappear.
I thought it was the VGA cable so I used a brand new one I had here as a backup and the same thing happened. I updated to drivers to the latest one (Nvidia Quadro NVS 290) but continued with the same problem.

I then started to hear a noise and every time that noise came up the lines would appear. I must say the lines are not very perceptible but they are there.

I open my PC tower and clearly I could hear the noise. Sounds exactly like a hard drive working. The thing is, I don't have a hard drive, I have 2 SSD's. So the noise is not coming from there.

I disconnected all fans and the noise continued to be heard. The only fan working was from the power supply unit and I didn't notice any changes in its rotation speed.

The noise is not a continuous one, comes up every 2 minutes with a 4 seconds duration, more or less.

I thought the noise could be coming from the graphic cards itself but they are passive, there's no cooler attached and as far as I know, transistors do not make noises.

Maybe the power supply is starting to give some warning that the end might be coming? But then again, how is the noise connected to the graphic card and those horizontal lines on the screen?

Thanks

March 6th, 2016, 11:46 PM

You could have a blown capacitor somewhere.

I recently replaced two caps in the power supply of my older Samsung monitor. The monitor would occasionally flicker and make hissing sounds. It eventually got to the point it would not turn on.

If the noise is inside your tower, hold a tube or small pipe to your ear and listen around to pinpoint the location. Like a paper towel tube or something.

PC noise

Discussion in Tech Support

PC noise