PSU Noisiest component by far - Issue?

[chivs688]

The cooling in my rig is all fan based, and all are the standard fans that came with the case, Corsair 800T, as well as my Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU cooler.

And by far the most noisiest component is my PSU, an XFX Pro 650W Core Edition. It's probably just as noisy if not more so that all the other fans combined.

Thing is, it's not just the sound of air being pushed through like it is on all the fans, it's more of a whiny noise. Sounds like it's maybe struggling and straining to pump the air out through the fans or something, although that's just a complete and uninformed guess. Not a pure electrical whine, does sound like it's at least partly to do with the fans and air flow, but not nearly the dull air sound that comes from all the other fans.

I'm pretty sure that it never used to be this loud, although hard to tell as I've had it for so long.

So could this be some sort of issue with the PSU itself? It's not a dust issue as I fairly regularly clean everything out for dust including the PSU fan.

I've recently upgraded to a 6970 GPU, so could it potentially be straining my PSU seeing as it's only 650W?

 

[Ace Modder]

A single 6970 GPU wont be pushing a decent 650w PSU to the extreme that iot will require some uber fan speed.

The fan could be faulty though. Record a video for youtube of the noise?

 

[Stuen4y]

The XFX Pro 650 Core Edition, even though it is a Seasonic OEM, is based on the platform of M12II Bronze series. It is a quality design but the fan profile is rather aggressive and after about 50% load it starts spinning faster and faster. The XFX is built with a bit lower quality of the components so it might start spinning even earlier or spin up faster. 6970 is a good 200 Watts and after overclock it might go up to 220-250W. If the rest of your system is more than 150-200W, even though the PSU is well into the comfortable zone when it comes to stress on the electric components inside it (<75-80% load from the combined 12V lines rating), the fan will be uncomfortably loud. If you want quiet PSU you will have to research it very well in advance as some manufacturers make brilliant power supplies that are rather noisy and some manufacturers make not good power supplies that are quiet. You want the ones that are brilliant and quiet but they are usually rather expensive ~>£100 for that sort of rating 650-700W.