Noisy SSD when playing games

phoenixlager · 22 May 2015 at 09:29

Hi.

I have just built a new system with a Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive alongside a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache. I have installed games onto the WD hard drive with no issues. Upon installing to the SSD, everytime i load a game the drive makes a high pitched whining noise. Is this normal on a SSD?

ED209 · 22 May 2015 at 09:40

are you sure its the SSD and not the WD black that's making the noise?

the SSD has no moving parts so its most likely going to be the WD black drive as this has moving parts and this is also the drive where your games are installed on to so its going to be doing all the work

phoenixlager · 22 May 2015 at 09:50

thanks for the response.

Ive downloaded steam onto the WD drive and installed some games onto this. When i downloaded COD Ghosts last week i've installed onto the SSD in hope it would load quicker. It is only this game which makes the high pitch noise, so thought itd be the SSD making the noise. Could it be the GPU making the noise? other games i've installed are MXGP, Crysis 1, GTA 4. I take it COD is the most graphic intense. I have a EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 4096MB GDDR5.

cheesyboy · 22 May 2015 at 09:55

Open the case an move the SSD away from the HDD and try to double check which is the noisy one, if not something else.

I've heard that using a kitchen roll tube against your ear to "point" at the individual components helps to isolate the sound. Not tried it myself, but seems reasonable in theory.

spoffle · 22 May 2015 at 09:55

That'll be your graphics card or PSU exhibiting capacitor whine/squeal.

KIA · 22 May 2015 at 17:52

phoenixlager said:
Hi.
Is this normal on a SSD?

Not unheard of. My MX100 makes noise under load.

malcolm · 23 May 2015 at 22:38

I had an early 32gbyte SSD that I could hear across the room, even though it was in a netbook. OCZ did replace it thankfully.

djabs786 · 23 May 2015 at 23:53

when I run HD Tune benchmark I can hear my 840 evo squeal a little, so presume it's not that unusual

darael · 23 May 2015 at 23:58

If the squealing noise is loud enough to annoy you, I'd personally RMA it. As well as running quicker and cooler, SSDs should also be able to run quietly. In fact a lot a of people replace their harddrives for SSD drives to get silence.

John24 · 24 May 2015 at 12:46

Not uncommon for flash to make a noise when accessed heavily, RAM does it too. Unusally it's not loud enough to hear it unless you've literally got your ear on it though.

Personally I'd RMA it because it's unusuall for it to be so audible so I wouldn't feel comfortable trusting it, it could be fine but the doubt would be there.

You can check it's actually the SSD by taking it out of the case, connecting it up and putting your ear on it while loading the game.

AtreuS · 27 May 2015 at 10:40

Does it do it when you have your speakers off?

My system makes a slight whine through the audio when large streams of data are put through the data bus.

Could be that.