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HX620 emitting a high pitch squeek


SkA

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Hello everyone,

I've purchased a Corsair HX620 PSU on wednesday, installed it and then replaced my graphics card from a Radeon HD 3850 to a Inno3D Geforce 8800GT on Thursday. Previously I had a 480W PSU. I realise the new PSU is a overkill for my PC but never mind that.

 

Anyway, I have already noticed yesterday (after I got my new graphics card and wanted to try out some games) that my Corsair seems to be emitting a really scary higher pitch sound that resembles electrical sparks. The odd thing is it only does this after perhaps half an hour of playing games (meaning the power consumption rises and things heat up in my case).

 

I could be wrong and the sound could also be a piece of paper hitting a fan from the inside (is there such a label or anything like that that could have came off and is making trouble?) but I can't really see any piece of paper anywhere which leads me to believe it really is more of a electrically produced sound. It's like a ripping higher pitch sound.

 

The odd thing is the sound comes and goes as I play games. It's not present all the time, it stops for a bit then comes back and stops and comes back. I only hear it while playing games and minutes after I quit back to my desktop the sound usually stops (altho, yesterday took a while for the sound to fully disappear - think I shutted off my PC for a fiev minutes at the end to make it go away). Seems like when the power consumption (or heat?) goes down the sound goes away permanently. And it usually takes a while before the PSU starts producing the sound too, it's not something that happens as soon as I run a game. I can't really say I ever heard it while surfing the web (etc.) and I have my PC turned on all day long.

 

I realize the easiest and probably only thing I can do is take it back to the shop and have them check it out, but since the shop is closed during the weekend I'm looking for suggestions untill then. Anything I can check on my own without voiding my warranty (as far as the possibility of a label or something hitting the fan goes, can't really do anything if it's electrical).

 

Anyway, I'm drawing a blank so any suggestion is welcomed. I'm not experiencing any stability issues of any sort at all, altho it does frighten me a bit that I could damage my other components if the PSU is damaged, but I read there's some kind of protection against that so I guess apart from the possibillity of the PSU dieing it's safe for me to test it out some more?

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I've been hearing a strangle high pitched sound also - kinda a bit like a squeaky squawk. In fact I thought it was from my graphics card to begin with but after trying a lesser graphics card I had the same sounds.

 

I even got a shock off the PSU today, went to plug the cable back in and my finger touched one of the prongs and I got a shock off it, never had that before and I've touched those prongs (on mine and many other PSU's) hundreds of times.

 

I'm beginning to think my PSU may be faulty - I tried a different PSU (much less power though, only 450W) and whilst I still had a similar sound the HX620 is more noticable, so I'm thinking maybe the HX has a problem and isn't supplying enough power?

 

From what I've been reading the HX should be able to handle this but I'm beginning to have my doubts, might just get a Coolermaster Realpower - had that in my last box never any trouble.

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  • Corsair Employee

xonics, Try the Paperclip test with the PSU plugged directly into a wall socket and if you still hear the noise then let get it replaced. Please use the On Line RMA Request Form and we will be happy to replace it.

 

Ska, Try using the system with the old video card and see if you still have the same problem, if so, then I would recommend testing the PSU on a different system to be sure. When swapping the video cards, make sure to reinstall the proper drivers, and I would suggest using a "Driver Cleaner" application to make sure you are getting a clean reinstall and there is no driver corruption or conflict.

 

To both of you, I would recommend loading setup defaults in the BIOS whenever you change your hardware configuration, including when you change out your PSU.

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Thank you for your answer. :sunglasse I did some more testing today. I turned on my PC in the morning and did some surfing while drinking my coffee (20 min or so). Then I ran 3DMark 06 and about 20 seconds into the first test the sound of "sparks" came back. It was only for a brief moment, but it came back time to time while I ran 3DMark. After I finished the benchmark, the sound never reoccurred.

 

I then proceeded to reset the BIOS to the defaults as you suggested and reseted it (I have everything on auto anyway, not much to reset). I reran 3DMark as soon as Vista booted up, and the sound was still present.

 

I sold my Radeon 3850, so I can't try switching the graphics card. I'll see if I can borrow one somewhere during the weekend tho.

 

I also tried plugging my PC into a different electrical outlet and I've tried switching the graphics card onto the second rail and putting my harddrives/DVDRW onto the first (I basically switched it around). The problem still persists.

 

It does seem to get worse as the system heats up, that's for sure. I ran 3DMark again after that and the first pass I only had about three occurrence of "sparks" in a really short interval of perhaps a second or less. I immediately reran the test when it finished, to keep things warm(er), and it gradually got worse (more occurrences and longer intervals of "sparks"). Which is basically what I noticed yesterday when playing COD4 - it got worse and worse to the point that It just got to scary to continue playing.

 

I tried to observe the inners of the PSU from the backside while running 3DMark to see if I can catch anything extraordinary, but I can't really say I saw anything odd.

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A friend of mine came over and brought his Geforce 7800 GS with him to try it out. With his card in my PC we couldn't reproduce the sound that I'm getting while I'm using my 8800 GT. So either the 7800 didn't load the PSU enough or it's some weird compatibility issue with my graphics card?

 

At the end we did both agree that the sound the PSU starts making is exactly the same as the sound you get when you plug the power cord into a PSU (or any other adapter) while the PSU is turned on - crackling sound of sparks. Can't describe it better.

 

Anyway, I installed my old 480W Tagan and I'm having 0 issues now so I'll take the HX620 back to the store on Monday to see what can be arranged.

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