Whats wrong with my power supply?

[NX74205]

hey everyone, I am experiencing some strange stuff whenever i turn on my comp. Whenever I turn on my comp I hear this high pitch sound coming out of it. I stuck my ear to it today and I believe that it is coming from my power supply, but I am not sure. The pitch proceeds for about a minute and then goes away and it isn't heard again until i turn on my comp again. what is going on here?

[Budfred]

It could be a number of things. If you are lucky it is a fan that needs to be cleaned, so it would be a good idea to blow out all the dust in your system. A slightly more difficult alternative would be a fan that is failing. I would take the cover off the case and boot while watching and listening. See if you can localize the noise and if it is a fan. Other options are more unpleasant. A failing hard drive, optical drive and so on... See what you can find out and post back. Also, tell us more about your system and the history of the problem. Did it just start, has it been coming on and so on???

[NX74205]

Well this is a fairly recent problem and this is a new computer. I just built it over the summer and the power suppply can't be more than a month or two old. The hard drives however are about 3-4 years old so one of them could be failing but i don't think that is it.

My setup is as follows:

AMD ASUS A7n8x-delxue mobo -new
AMD 2600 XP -new
Radeon 9700- new
MAxtor 60 GB hd- a year old
MAXtor 20 GB hardrive -2-3 years old
CD rom-drive- 1 year old
CD RW drive- 1 year old
Floppy- new
Raidmax 420W power supply-new

that is pretty much everything in my system. I don't think it is a dust problem since the power supply is so new.

[Budfred]

Well, I would try the boot with the cover off to see if you can localize the problem. It could even be something like a fan hitting against something at high speed and eventually causing it to move. If you don't hear anything with the cover off, that is the most likely possibility...

It might be worthwhile to download and run the diagnostic software from the hard drive manufacturers to make sure you don't have failing drives... it could be very unpleasant if they are failing and you are not prepared....:eek: :eek:

[NX74205]

This is an update...I have found out that the sound is located right around my processor, meaning that it could be my processor making that sound or the fan that is supposedly cooling it. Also sometimes, my computer hsa started reseting itself for no reason. What is wrong here?

[Budfred]

I don't think the CPU has the ability to make a noise, so that means it is almost certainly your CPU fan. The intermittant shutdowns would be consistent with that since the computer will shut down when the CPU fan doesn't maintain a certain level of speed. This is actually good news since fans are pretty cheap to replace. However, I wouldn't run the computer until the fan is replaced since it could overheat...