I posted about this over a year ago on other forums and never got it fixed but the noise is much lower now so it is not much of a annoyance anymore but I am still curious as to what is causing this.
First, specs:
Athlon 64 3000+
MB GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9 Nforce4
Leadtek Geforce 6800 256MB PCI-E
1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR RAM
Win2k SP4 all latest updates installed.
Latest drivers for everything.
First let me describe the noise. Think of a regular box fan running at about medium rpm setting. Take a paperclip and stick it in so that just the tip hits the blades. Now take this quick tapping sound and make it a lot more "scratchy" sounding.
Now this is the weird part. The noise is only present in a few situations:
1. When I scroll up/down on any webpage. Doesn't matter how I scroll (mousewheel, drag elevator, click up/down buttons), it always is present. Does not matter what web browser I use either. The only difference is scrolling on a webpage with a lot of pictures/flash ads/etc makes the noise lounder than scrolling on a website with mostly text.
2. In almost any 3d accelerated game. Pretty much anytime that there is something on the screen which is opengl/directx I will hear the noise, usually loud. If I minimize the game or bring something else to the foreground then the noise gets very quiet.
In example 1 I am not running any 3d accelerated apps, just IE or Firefox.
I took a small tube, stuck one end into my ear and used the other end to fish around to find the exact source of this noise. It appears to be coming from the end of the video card, where the RAM chips are located. Although there is a small silver round cylinder next to them, don't know if it is a capacitor or not but someone has suggested that caps can make noise. I even unplugged the fan on the vid card to make sure, and it does really sound like it is coming from the RAM chips, 95% sure.
Here is the other thing though, I have RMA'd the video card 2 times. First time was for some other issue, the second time was for this noise issue. Each time they sent me a new vid card and all 3 of them have the same exact noise issue. This makes me think that the motherboard is at fault but the noise is coming from the video card.
I even ran the PC with minimal hardware and it made no difference. The noise is not coming from the PC speaker. The onboard audio card is disabled. System is not overclocked. There are no stability issues. Like I mentioned in the start, the noise is much quieter now so it is not a problem for me at all but this problem is so akward that it makes me really curious to find out what the hell is causing it.
So...haunted computer? Hobgoblins running around and stealing my megahurtz? Whats going on here?
First, specs:
Athlon 64 3000+
MB GIGABYTE GA-K8NF-9 Nforce4
Leadtek Geforce 6800 256MB PCI-E
1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR RAM
Win2k SP4 all latest updates installed.
Latest drivers for everything.
First let me describe the noise. Think of a regular box fan running at about medium rpm setting. Take a paperclip and stick it in so that just the tip hits the blades. Now take this quick tapping sound and make it a lot more "scratchy" sounding.
Now this is the weird part. The noise is only present in a few situations:
1. When I scroll up/down on any webpage. Doesn't matter how I scroll (mousewheel, drag elevator, click up/down buttons), it always is present. Does not matter what web browser I use either. The only difference is scrolling on a webpage with a lot of pictures/flash ads/etc makes the noise lounder than scrolling on a website with mostly text.
2. In almost any 3d accelerated game. Pretty much anytime that there is something on the screen which is opengl/directx I will hear the noise, usually loud. If I minimize the game or bring something else to the foreground then the noise gets very quiet.
In example 1 I am not running any 3d accelerated apps, just IE or Firefox.
I took a small tube, stuck one end into my ear and used the other end to fish around to find the exact source of this noise. It appears to be coming from the end of the video card, where the RAM chips are located. Although there is a small silver round cylinder next to them, don't know if it is a capacitor or not but someone has suggested that caps can make noise. I even unplugged the fan on the vid card to make sure, and it does really sound like it is coming from the RAM chips, 95% sure.
Here is the other thing though, I have RMA'd the video card 2 times. First time was for some other issue, the second time was for this noise issue. Each time they sent me a new vid card and all 3 of them have the same exact noise issue. This makes me think that the motherboard is at fault but the noise is coming from the video card.
I even ran the PC with minimal hardware and it made no difference. The noise is not coming from the PC speaker. The onboard audio card is disabled. System is not overclocked. There are no stability issues. Like I mentioned in the start, the noise is much quieter now so it is not a problem for me at all but this problem is so akward that it makes me really curious to find out what the hell is causing it.
So...haunted computer? Hobgoblins running around and stealing my megahurtz? Whats going on here?