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CPU whining

forteh

forteh

forteh

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Joined
18 Jan 2010
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Lichfield
Not sure where this should go but here seems to be logical :D

I recently upgraded my old i3 [email protected] to an i5 [email protected] and when stress testing at full load the system makes a high pitched whining noise, this never happened with the i3 and only seems to manifest in the i5 above 4ghz. As soon as I stop the prime95 test it stops whining.

If I apply slight sideways pressure to the heatsink it changes the pitch of the whine as it moves on the cpu. Obviously this isn't something I regularly do, I discovered it when I put my hand against the cpu fan to see if it was vibrating.

Motherboard is a GA H55M UD2H, heatsink is a thermalright truespirit 140bw applied with old arctic silver ceramique (found a tube of it in the loft from years ago!). Temperatures are good at aroun 65-70°C full load small ffts in prime95.

What's causing this? Is this something I should worry about? Can I stop it?
 
try disabling c1e in the bios,cpu will still throttle if you pick balanced power profile in windows

(usually it only makes that noise when cpu is in idle state)
 
All power saving options are turned off and it only does it at full load when really pushing the cpu; it doesn't start immediately, more like 2-3 minutes into a stress run.
 
Coil whine, I would guess, from one or some of the motherboard capacitors.

Does it do it under normal cpu-load scenarios, or just stress testing? I wouldn't worry about it unless the noise is annoying.
 
I had figured it was coil whine but was confused as to why it changes pitch if you move the heatsink, that said it would probably be flexing the motherboard rather than the cpu itelf.

It certainly doesn't happen under normal usage, I didn't notice it playing arma3 either, only seems to be when all four cores are 100%. It doesn't bother me but my if my pregnant wife is trying to sleep and I'm trying to stress test she moans - she lost her right ear hearing (virus killed the auditory nerve :() and has since developed a super sensitve left hand ear and can hear bats outside the window :D

I guess I should avoid stress testing late at night!
 
forteh said:
I had figured it was coil whine but was confused as to why it changes pitch if you move the heatsink, that said it would probably be flexing the motherboard rather than the cpu itelf.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's to do with resonant frequency of the component. When you adjust the physical property of it by administering pressure to the component, or the component's anchor point, it changes it's resonant frequency.

On GPUs they add glue to the capacitors to avoid it (I think?). You could try that.
 
Whilst it doesn't manifest during normal/gaming use I will leave it be for the moment, if it gets worse then I will look at deadening them :)
Cheers all, just something new that I hadn't experienced on this 4 year old computer :D
 
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