Mysterious sqeak

[TheLearner]

Ok. That's 'odd'.

Lets get our hands dirty, crack the side panel off and get a torch. Poke around the mobo and look at the capacitors. Are they all good (not leaking, buldging)? Right, find and unplug the cable that feeds the PC speaker; did that make the noise go away?

Ok, remove any speakers from the system (the actual speakers you use, not the one that goes beep on boot), noise gone? If so it could be picking up RF from the PC, even when powered off/sleep/standby it's still energised, if you yank the power cord out the arse of it... that'll shut the sucker up.

As I said I'm not 100% sure, it could be something utterly daft like a fan is knakkered and you're only putting the machine in suspend so it spins slower... but erm... yes.

Kids lost a pet mouse recently?

[spike4real]

I've known faulty PSUs to scream when they are on the way out.
Very rare but does happen!

Dan
Panacea Systems

[LordGrover]

I have a batch of Dell Optiplex 745s that made a low volume, high-pitched beepy-whine intermittently - it was the hard drives. Over the course of a year or so they all died but were replaced under warranty.

[spike4real]

LordGrover said:

I have a batch of Dell Optiplex 745s that made a low volume, high-pitched beepy-whine intermittently - it was the hard drives. Over the course of a year or so they all died but were replaced under warranty.

typical dell machines

[jimmyjimjim]

Mine happened to go on Saturday. Still, it had given me two months of warning squeaks beforehand so when it went it wasn't a surprise, and took no time to replace.

Tagan too; only about 18 months old. Teplaced it with an Antec, so not hugely happy to find yours was an Antec...

[dilbert]

I just finished speccing out a new PC. On using the ready reckoner, I was staggered to find that these modern machines can be gtting on for 800Watts.

If it's four years old then maybe it doesn't need that kind of grunt, but the closer you run the supply to or worse beyond it's rated spec, the shorter it's life will be.

If you get a 1KW supply, it doesn't mean it's going to draw 1KW, just that it won't have to work too hard if you ask it to draw 800. TBH I didn't go for the 1KW supply, but I guess you get my drift!

[Morningside]

spike4real said:

I've known faulty PSUs to scream when they are on the way out.
Very rare but does happen!

Dan
Panacea Systems

Yup, I get that a lot (mainly on old servers). Wait for the pop as the (dried out) old capacitors chuck out their tinfoil shorting the board followed by blue smoke.

Sometimes you get a high pitched squeal when the board is shorted as the PSU is switch mode they turn on, see short, powerdown, turn on...etc.

Edited by Morningside on Thursday 4th October 20:55