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Nvidia -VERYLoud High Pitched Whine

282 views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  GerroffMe 
#1 ·
To be as succinct as possible:

Running my "sig rig" with a 750w PSU, plugged in an old Nvidia GTX8800 alongside an AMD HD 7970, and "something" made an extremely loud, high pitched noise, similar to coil whine but ear drum piercing.

The result was that the BIOS on my machine became corrupted so the machine wouldn't even POST, and I had to reflash the BIOS and reinstall the OS to get it working normally again, but nothing appears to have been permanently damaged.

Why did this happen?

Is the card faulty (I took it out an old machine and never tested it)?
or
Did I draw too much power from the PSU running those 2 cards, 3 HDDs, and a overclocked 2500k?
or
something else?

It would be good if someone could shed some light on this because although I fixed the issue, I don't really know why it happened.
 
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#2 ·
Pretty sure 750w is more than enough for that, it may have been one of the cards... You may want to run a stress test for about 20 minutes on the CPU and both GPUs. And can you elaborate on the sound? Do you think a fan caused it? a capacitor?
 
#3 ·
It sounded like capacitor whine, but must have been about 80db. It sounded similar to one of those hand held rape alarm things. I tried to discern where it was coming from but other than the general motherboard region I couldn't work it out.

I know the 7970 is fine as I use this on a daily basis. It isn't overclocked at the moment.
The CPU also passes Prime95 for 1 hour.

I just find it strange that whatever it was corrupted the motherboard BIOS. I turned the machine off at the mains as soon as the noise erupted when power went through it, but I would not have thought this would have corrupted the BIOS. Obviously it's not good to hard power down machines like this during boot, but I've done it before without issue.
 
#6 ·
What you describe (the rape alarm, LOL) sounds like a sudden and catastrophic failure of a large electrolytic capacitor. Did you smell anything out of the ordinary when it happened? I'd at least take a look inside the PSU and make sure there are no burn components or obviously leaking/expanded capacitors in it.

What's odd is the BIOS corruption - I have never seen that happen in consequence with a loud noise at the same time. Sounds like something physically blew.

Greg
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by hammong View Post

What you describe (the rape alarm, LOL) sounds like a sudden and catastrophic failure of a large electrolytic capacitor. Did you smell anything out of the ordinary when it happened? I'd at least take a look inside the PSU and make sure there are no burn components or obviously leaking/expanded capacitors in it.
Well see this is what crossed my mind. I have seen capacitors go before (had 2 ultrasonic cleaners catch fire sat on my desk) and there was smoke, a horrible smell and a large amount of debris blown everywhere along with scorch marks.

I have none of this, there was no smell, no smoke and no pop or any description. The PSU is still operating fine as well! I could take it apart but from my brief look inside it at the time it appeared fine.

could it be that the either the PCI-E on the Mobo side or the GFX card side could have shorted something, i.e. if you shorted pins in the PCI-E slot? If this happened would it cause such a catastrophic failure?

I am at a loss really as I want to use the card, but I just can't be bothered relfashing my BIOS and risking damaging my motherboard, not that it's expensive, but I just don't have the time haha.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.
 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by REAPER XD View Post

My thought is that your pc worked fine before the 8800. It was a problem with the old GPU and probably had a static short or the power wasnt connected to it properly.
Reckon it would be unlikely to corrupt the BIOS again then if reconnected? I might just bite the bullet and stuff it in and if the same happens again then so be it.
 
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