High pitch sound from motherboard

[Phalanix]

Setting up a new system with R3 Formula mobo; everything was running fine - I had a temporary video card while I waited for my GTX 580 to arrive. The temp card was a Quadro FX something (I forget).

Anyway, after I received my new GTX 580 today, I installed it and flipped the power switch on the PSU to "on". Then suddenly an odd high pitched squeal / "eeeeeeee" sound starts eminating from the mobo. Sounds like it's coming from around the BIOS_LED light area.

I unplugged the video card and flipped the PSU switch on again, the noise was still there. I unplugged the power from the PSU to the mobo and the sound went away, so I'm pretty sure it's not the PSU that's making the sound. All components in this computer are new and installed a week ago.

I tried clearing the CMOS, flipping between BIOS1 and BIOS2, still had that high pitch sound. I then went back into the BIOS to check the settings and booted into Windows. The after a few minutes I noticed the sound was gone and everything seems to be back to "normal".

Anyone have an idea what the noise was? Was it making that sound becaused I changed the hardware configuration and I just needed to enter the BIOS for it to register the changes (kind of like when you change the amount of RAM).

Mobo is still within the exchange period, should I bring it back to the store to exchange it? If anyone has some ideas what this sound was, please let me know.

Thanks!

[Divinedark]

It sounds like coil whine. I had the exact same problem. I had to change power supplies to get it to go away. I'm running a gtx 580 and had an XFX black edition psu. I exchanged it for a Corsair HX850 in an attempt to fix another problem, and it fixed my coil whine instead.

It's caused by the frequency emitted by certain electronic components harmonizing. If your psu and and gpu emit the same or similar frequencies, then you get coil whine. You can try to turn off C1E or other power saving features in your bios. That has been reported to fix it in some Gigabyte boards. Fans have been shown to cause it on some other boards. Just start un hooking case fans to see if the sound goes away.

[Phalanix]

Thanks for the reply - the noise occured just after I had installed my EVGA GTX 580.

After further diagnosis, it seems like the sound is indeed coming from the rear of the PSU. I have a Corsair HX1000W PSU and it's only about 2 month old.

The noise still occurs with nothing else plugged in (although more faint), PSU switch to on with the comptuer off.

Looks like I'll gonna have to RMA the PSU.

Just curious, with your Corsair, did you use the fixed PCI-e cables or the modular ones for the GTX 580? I used the fixed cables, not sure if that was the cause of the problem.

[martin_metal_88]

This is just coil noise. No need for RMA if you can live with it. Also, no one can certified that the replacement wont do this. Sometime it's PSU, sometime GPU and other time it's the mobo. If you RMA the PSU, I hope the replacement will be ok!