Noise from motherboard - any ideas?

Question

I have an ECS K7VTA3 (v2) mobo that is making a high pitched noise whenever there seems to be some kind of IO going on. Before you say mem, disk, fan, or power supply, let me just say that this is NOT the issue. It's almost that you can hear the CPU working, as it comes and goes with activity (scroll the screen, it squeaks). I have also reseated the CPU with new heat-goo because it seems that it is from the CPU itself. I also vacuumed everything out. There is a row of standup capacitors near the CPU. Is it possible that one of them is going bad and making a noise when used?

From a cold start (1st power of the day), it will sometimes lockup just after the POST, other times, the POST never even starts. Power cycle a few times, and will eventually boot to a normal and stable XP environment.

If it is a bad cap or other component on the mobo, and it eventually does blow, is there ANY risk of fire if I left the computer on 7x24?

Although the suggestion of replacing power, ram, disk, cpu, and mobo is a bit steep (thank got my cd burner is ok - haha), I think that the idea of an IC (northbridge or southbridge) actually squeaking due to heat failure is the most likely answer.

FYI, the noise is coming near the CPU. The HD/RAM/PSU are just too far away. I thought about the CPU fan, but there is no way that a fan would squeak based on I/O activity like moving a mouse. Thanks Ben!

Answer 1

When integrated circuits fail, they can often make a high-pitched noise, especially when they fail due to overheat. I could be just about any IC from the CPU to the Northbridge or Southbridge or the BOIS chip. You are at immediate risk of motherboard failure, it sounds like you have experienced intermittent failures already.

From my experience, you need to replace the motherboard, CPU and RAM. I would also replace the power supply, as a poor quality power supply will cause MB components to fail more quickly. If your hard drive is more than two years old, you would be well off to replace that as well.

You have a small risk of fire, but a larger risk of smoke and smell. I would discontinue using the system immediately and replace the above mentioned components. If nothing else, do a complete system backup and reduce the load on the system as much as possible.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Probably not a hard drive, as it is not required to simply scroll down a page or other really simple things like that. Sounds like you do have something going rotten in there. My first guess would be the CPU istelf, depending on how old it is, how much intense programs you have run, or if you over clock, you could fry a CPU in a matter of months.

If you overclock, you may have done it wrong, or gone to high, and fried your CPU. If you don't overclock you may just have a bad unit, and it has expired early. My suggestion would be to back up your hard drive to an external one, and run your computer till it dies. Every time you put something really important on the computer, back it up to the external hard drive. That way, if it does go out with a bang (more like, with a fwoosh) you wont lose all your important stuff.

Answer 3

This squeeking cannot be the motherboard as it has no moving parts. So it can be only a few things

1. CPU fan
2 Hard drive
3 PSU

I dont think its your PSU
It sounds like your processer fan is on its way out. Your CPU warms up your fan tries to go faster ball bearings are weak so causes them to squeel, fan cannot keep up cpu over heats PC shuts down or freezes.

There got it out in one sentance....

Answer 4

mine makes that noise when i start playing a video game. when i stop playing, the noise stops. it must be the video portion of the m.b. no big deal. i have a dedicated video card i am ready to install and turn off onboard video.

Answer 5

I think its probably your disk that needs replacement