PSU is making a "chirping" sound

[jedisponge]

Hey guys,

I've been noticing a constant noise coming from my PC, without really pinpointing where the noise is exactly coming from until now (my very scientific tests include me putting my ear at various points of the PC till I figured where the noise was coming from).

Now that I've pinpointed the noise, I started to wonder if it was something serious or not too much. The noise resembles a very faint bird chirp-esque sound, with about three of these "chirps" per second. It seems cyclical, and when I power the PC down the noise slows down before it goes away as the computer actually does power off. The noise is, again, fairly faint, though I could still hear it over the hum of the PC's other fans from about 10-15 feet away.

Does anyone know what it might be? Could it be the fan needing some grease (ie not too serious), or is it likely to be a capacitor doing something funny(ie I should replace ASAP)?

 

[mpilchfamily]

So its a chirp and not a wine? That being the case it could just be a bearing in the fan going bad. What PSU is it.

 

[jedisponge]

Thanks for responding!

The unit is an Antec Neo NE 550W psu. And I hope my description is good enough, but to me it definitely sounds like a chirp, rather than a whiny noise, which now that you mention it, would make more sense if a capacitor was going bad.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Well i would hope a cap wasn't going bad on that unit. Here is one way you can test to see if its the fan. Stick a pen or pencil into the fan to stop it and see if the sound goes away. You won't hurt anything stoping it like that for a short time. obviuosly if it stops then the fan is the problem. If it doesn't then there is somthing else going on.

 

[jedisponge]

Just a quick and dirty update; I tried what you said, and it is indeed the fan. Funnily enough, after I took out the thing that stopped the fan, the fan started spinning and hasn't made any of those noises again.

Cool beans and thanks much, m.