Computer making wierd "beeping" noises

[chade]

A temperature spike like this can be one of two causes:

a) CPU is overheating

b) temperature gauge is reporting the wrong figure

The first will occur if the CPU is being worked hard, and your heat sink/fan is incapable of handling the job, or seated incorrectly.  The latter is more likely (most heat sinks sold with computers are up to the job, if installed correctly).

Which is the case is easy enough to test with your fingers - run the computer with the case closed but not screwed down, and when you hear beeping, remove the side of the case and put your fingers NEAR BUT NOT TOUCHING the heat sink.  It may burn you if it's too hot.  It _should_ be cool enough to touch (at least briefly) - but then again, yours is potentially overheating.

To cause the overheating problem, run a CPU burn-in program, or a program which utilizes 100% of your CPU (my favorite is SETI@home - which also assists the Search for Extra-Terrestial Intelligence - see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/download.html).  This should tax your CPU enough to cause a warning beep.

Your case temperature should rise along with your CPU temperature unless your case is VERY well ventilated - but not nearly as much.  A 20-30 increase in CPU temperature may cause 1/10th or so as much increase in case temperature.  The case would also likely be slower to cool down as case cooling is generally more passive and/or less efficient that CPU cooling.

Dust in the heat sink would reduce performance a bit - if the dust build up is really bad it coud be substantial.  This should be easy enough to tell just by looking at the heat sink and fan.  Are they COATED with dust, or just a little dusty?  A little dusty is not really a problem at all.

If you do discover that your CPU could use better cooling, and you want to try the cheap option first, buy some arctic silver paste and visit http://www.arcticsilver.com/instructions.htm for instructions on how to use it.  It will involve removing the heat sink from your CPU, cleaning it, and pasting it up with the thermal paste before remounting the heat sink.  This will increase the temperature flow between your CPU and the heat sink, reducing the CPU's temperature.  If this doesn't work, you'll need a new heat sink.

If you discover your temperature gauge is at fault - you have a few choices.  Reflashing the BIOS with another version may fix it (BIOS upgrades sometimes re-calibrate reporting of the temperature, when found to be innaccurate).  If not, you may have to disable the heat warning for the CPU.  This is in itself not the best path to take - unless there is a separate warning for the CPU fan failing, if the fan stops your computer may melt (literally).  This is not a very common occurance however.

Don't be too exasperated Temporal - its a matter of finding the problem (by confirmation or elimination) and then fixing it.  Most PC problems you can fix yourself given a little know how and a little work.

[Temporal]

b4 i do that just a question on safety, i dont own one of those bands that u plug into the earth wire slot into your electrical socket to remove static electricity from your hands, so how do i "demagnitize" myself?

[chade]

The potential for static electricity to damage circuits exists.  It *can* happen.  Every textbook/manual/instruction sheet on handling circuit boards warns against static electricity.  HOWEVER, the risks are greatly exaggerated.  As long as you're not rubbing your socked feet against your shagpile, or wearing clothing that builds up a static charge quickly, you're not likely to damage anything.  (It's still worth 'grounding' yourself though - can never be too careful).

The easiest way to 'earth' yourself and therefore remove any static charge is to touch yourself to an electically grounded object (such as a plugged in computer).

[Temporal]

um, a stupid question, where is the heat sink?
theres a fan mounted onto my MB and i believe that the heat sink and cpu is below it, but theres a small squarish heat sink placed between the fan and my pci slots.

The tempreture though rose to 50degrees celsius quickily when i ran that program u suggested then it slowly rose to 60+ b4 i shut the program down, i didnt touch the squarish heat sink but i could feel the heat around it, but when my temp went back to a normal 35degrees, the heat i felt was about the same heh.

[chade]

Not a stupid question at all.  The heat sink sits on top of the processor - it's a square (usually) or round hunk of metal (usually silver, but sometimes copper) with 'fins' ie. it's not solid, however its bits of metal with gaps inbetween (it's one piece that's been cast this way).  The (usually black) fan sits on top of the heat sink.  The heat sink is attached to the top of the processor either by being clipped to the processor socket, or screwed to the motherboard (or both). See for example the image below
which is a fairly typical looking heat sink/fan combo.  Note the small silver clip protruding from the base where it clips onto the processor socket (there is another piece of this clip protruding from the other side of the heat sink).

Heat sinks on modern processors are quite large (up to 8 or even 10 cm wide) and usually completely cover the CPU socket (it may not even be visible beneath  it).  They are the highest component on your motherboard - rising up a good 10 odd centimeters.

There are sometimes other fans and/or heat sinks mounted on motherboards - most noticeably on the North bridge and/or southbridge (the bridges are conduits for data between the CPU and RAM/AGP (Northbridge - may include some other functions) or PCI/USB/IDE/SATA/serial/paralell etc devices (Southbridge - may also include other stuff)).  Note that some motherboards are moving away from the (now traditional southbridge+northbridge design).  The heat sinks/fans on top of these chips will be MUCH MUCH smaller than on your processor - they produce nowhere near as much heat.

Also - now that you've found your problem, you'll be wanting to fix it.  Remounting the heat sink with new paste could very well solve your problem (unless the processor and heat sink are in good contact, the heat does not dissapate well enough and the processor tends to overheat) or you may need a new heat sink/fan.

[Temporal]

well i didnt touch the heat sink but when i put my hand around it i hardly felt any heat when my tempreture reached 60+

also if my CPU is overheating why would it happen all of a sudden recently?
I've had my PC for 6months and i never had any problems like this until now, so i doubt my heatsinks are not placed in properly

[Temporal]

This is worse than i thought, i was just surfing the net when my screen suddenly turned black, and the light on my monitor indicated that it was not receiving any signal from the computer, however it was still running.

i turned off the power switch and then back on but the pc would not boot up, the screen remained blank.
i turned off the power switch again and waited a little longer before turning it back on, turned on the computer and then it started up normally as usual....
what is going on?

also i still had the side casing removed, a pityful attempt to keep the cpu cool....

oh yeah, just updated bios, no difference.
I also find it wierd that my cpu had a tempreture spike while running defrag while other applications just caused my tempreture to rise up gradually.

[merlin]

more info on mobo vid card hard drive etc...and o/s..what bios award phoenix etc..