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I know computers, I have been fixing them and building them for over a decade... but I don't know the exact electronics of them.

My personal desktop PC is making an irregular, but constant, extremely high pitched chirping noise. I know this could be my hard drive, but I've heard that noise before and I believe this is a capacitor or part of the electronics. This noise is right at the edge of my hearing and I can feel it more than I can hear it.

After a while, it starts to give me a headache and makes me physically sick.

How long will this last? Is there anything I can do to fix it (short of replacing the entire motherboard)?

My Motherboard: Gigabyte X-58 Extreme

Indrek
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mawburn
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2 Answers2

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Bad inductors?

Inductors vibrate during system operation due to magnetostriction, producing audible noise. On a motherboard, inductors typically look like donuts with wire wrapped around them, or small coils of wire encased in a plastic square. While there is usually glue on the inductors to suppress this vibration, poorly applied, damaged, or otherwise failing glue on one or more inductors can cause this noise.

Applying glue from a glue gun may help solve this problem.

Note that you may want to pinpoint the source of the noise before attempting to repair it. Capacitors are often (incorrectly) blamed for this behavior.

Community
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bwDraco
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Be sure it's not the Alarm set to go off when the CPU fan or some other fan is not running - else unplug HD to verify and boot up with a Live Linux CD

user165286
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