High pitched whining noise during certain games and scrolling web pages

frenchy0312 · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:06

Hi i have a rather annoying problem. During certain games such as spellforce 2, stalker:SOC, or crysis i get a high pitched whining noise from my computer during menu screens. It seems to go away during actual gameplay. Also when browsing webpages if i scroll down with the mouse wheel i hear a faint electrical whine coming from the computer again briefly while it scrolls. Ive tried to pinpoint it but obviously this is quite difficult. I tried the cardboard tube to the ear technique and that didnt help. I thought it was maybe the graphics card (5850) but then again it did it with my last card too (4870). It doesnt seem to have any effect on performance its just annoying to be honest. Perhaps a PSU problem?
Specs:
AMD 955 BE @ 3.6Ghz
Sapphire tech PC-AM3RS790G
XFX HD5850 Black edition with Zalman VF3000
On board sound
Coolermaster extreme power plus 550w
Samsung F2 1TB
Zalman CNPS10X performa

Tealc · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:17

It's probably the PSU. I have it sometimes too. It's called coil whine.

It wasn't there in my previous PSU and I only swapped them 2 days ago so I noticed the difference immediately.

honosuseri · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:19

Well i think it may be coming from the PSU. It's common when a PSU is under load but then it's not as if you have a cheap and nasty power supply. Can you borrow a PSU to try and eliminate that as the source?

That said it could be a fan spinning at full chat. Strange you don't notice it during gaming as this is what will stress the system more and cause the GPU or CPU fan to work harder.

honosuseri · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:19

lmao you always just pip me to the post tealc ;p

frenchy0312 · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:26

Cant really borrow a supply as none of my friends are really into pc building/gaming etc. I guess if its just something that happens to certain ones i can live with it. Im thinking of buying a bigger supply towards the end of the year anyway to maybe dabble in crossfire. ill just have to wait until then. Its definatly not my cpu or gpu fan as i have both set to run at their minimum speed. thanks guys

Tealc · 31 Jul 2010 at 13:32

Yeah funny that.

It's also strange that when I was overclocked on this PSU I wouldn't notice it but when sometimes my PC would boot at stock 2.66ghz it would whine. I'm unsure why this would be. My coil whine is quite quiet though and was also amplified through the onboard sound. I heard that it's the motherboard PSU combination that causes the problem for me.