Computer Hope
Hardware => Hardware => Topic started by: Temporal on June 24, 2004, 06:16:07 AM
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I dont know how to discribe the sound i'm hearing but beeping seems the best way to describe it.
However this beeping noises isnt the same beeps i hear when i get a system error.
The beeping noises are completely random and start and stop when certain aplications are being run, mostly games.
I first encounted this noises a few months ago when i installed a program that was supposed to scan your system and display your specifications at a detailed level and such, and contained many other misc functions.
When i used it to run a scan my computer started creating that wierd beeping noises consistently and would only stop when i restarted it.i uninstalled the program quickily and unfortunately i do not remember the name.
now months after that incident my computer started creating these beeping noises again, which was after turned off 3D sound settings in a game called "Freelancer" to fix a sound problem i had where alot of the sound would skip.
the beeping sound would only come when i played that game so i stopped. however recently it started to spread.
it made beeping sounds while i was running diskcleanup as well, and now almost every game i play i encounter this sound, games like Halo, counterstrike etc.
i also noticed that my sound would get distorted/skipped whenever the beeping sound came.
the beeping sound seems to come from either my harddisk or my motherboard, which ever i am not sure.
i would greatly apreciate any help on this problem.
my system specifications are
Gigabyte P4 titan 865E motherboard
Onboard sound Realtek AC'97 Audio
512MB RDRAM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 120GB
256MB Saphire Radeon 9800 XT Atlantis
P4 3.06ghz with HT
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What was the program called that you used to detect your system's components?
I used PC Wizard 2004 a while ago and immediatly, my temperature rose with at least 10 degrees celcius, causing my heat sensors to go wack and not stop beeping until I had reset.
What is your CPU and case temperature and what are your temperature tresholds?
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What is RD-RAM by the way? Is that the RAM with cooling sinks?
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What is RD-RAM by the way
http://www.a1-electronics.net/Memory/2003/RDRAM.shtml
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I believe Sandra was the name of the program, its supposed to be quite popular, guess it just screws up my machine some how.
I believe Rdram is Rambus Dram.
Could it be possible that my heat sensors are damaged and are beeping randomly?
I am quite sure my computer is not creating those noises due to overheating, also it only comes totally randomly when i run certain aplications, mostly games.
also when the beeping comes my sound skips and gets distorted.
could it be my onboard sound?
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I use Sisoft Sandra as well, I have not encountered any problems with this program that caused 'beeping noises'
I donot think I can help you, when your kind of problem happens to me, it is usually my temperature rising above the set thresholds.
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Raptor could be on the right track. Beeping sounds can be made by your motherboard when you have (in the PC Health Status section of the BIOS) your system set to warn you when it's overheating. Most commonly overheating will occur when your PC is stressed. The heat overload is measured at the processor. The beeps are regular, measured beeps, same sound, always the same space apart. Your computer may well be experiencing problems at the same time - this is quite normal when your PC is overheating (and the beeping mechanism itself may cause problems - its not MEANT to be beeping - that's a warning to shutdown and fix the problem).
This idea fits the pattern of your problem - firstly running Sisoft Sandra caused the problem (SS taxes your system considerably), then it appeared when running taxing 3D games, then less taxing games, and disk cleanup...indicating if this is the cause the problem is getting worse. Given your processor is a very high clocked processor, this also fits the pattern.
Either install a temperature monitoring utility (such as Motherboard Monitor) available at http://mbm.livewiredev.com/download.html to see if you are running too hard, or run your system til it beeps then immediately reboot into the BIOS and check the processor temperature (under PC Health Status). You could also do a manual check (run your PC hard, bring your hand close to but NOT TOUCHING the heat sink on your processor - if it's hot enough to beep, it's hot enough to burn. If via any of these methods you note a temperature that's too high (80+ is very high, 70+ is a worry, <60 is fine (centigrade of course)) then you will need to have your processor heat sink and fan remounted - you may possibly need a new heat sink and fan combo to handle the load if the current one is not up to it. High performance units (eg those made by Thermaltake) are available, at a price.
Beware mounting a heat sink onto a processor can be a delicate process, and the right materials (especially a high performance thermal compund) is necessary. Check out http://www.arcticsilver.com/instructions.htm for an idea of what is involved. Also note that you must be VERY CAREFUL when mounting the heat sink. It must be clipped onto the processor socket - involving the application of high force (more than enough to crack the processor and/or motherboard) if it is done incorrectly. If you want details on how to do it properly, post back - otherwise I won't go into it quite yet.
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I forgot to ask:
Does your mainboard support SmartFan?
If yes, this might be the source of your problems. I had to disable mine because it would randomly play beeping sounds.
You can disable Smartfan in the BIOS.
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wow thanks for the long reply chade, i just installed MBM and i'm going to check the tempreture when my pc starts the beeping noises
Raptor, on the back of the box my motherboard came in it says it has smartfan, it even says so in the manual, i go to bios, and the option is not there...what in the world....
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No problems man - Raptor's question is a very good one though. Look again in the BIOS for SmartFan and turn it the *censored* off. It will be in PC Health Status section of the BIOS. You do not want this enabled in my opinion (the idea is to limit the speed of the CPU fan based on temperature of the CPU - to me anything that slows down the CPU fan is a bad bad idea - particularly as temperature gauges in PCs can be out of whack).
Good call Raptor.
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It is also stated on the box and in the manual that not all Gigabyte mainboards supports the functions stated on the box and in the manual.
Either you overlooked it or it really is not there. Try searching for it, and see if you can disable it. Beats installing a new CPU if heat is not your problem.
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yup, its not there, i just installed MBM and well... the beeping noise so far...is gone!
i have no idea what i did, i just installed MBM.
Could it be possible that SANDRA causing some problems b4 triggered a problem on my MB and installing MBM caused it to untrigger the problem, possibly the alarm system?
I've ran a few games where i had the problem and i didnt get the beeping sound at all, my CPU tempreture the whole time reached a max of 58degrees celsius
i'm going to do more testing and see if the sound comes back, i still would like to find out what caused the problem etc, i guess theres no such thing as a perfect PC.
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Anything's possible, but that's very doubtful.
It's more likely its a colder day where you are, and you haven't hit 60 yet - which I'm guessing is the trigger point for the beeping.
Have you checked in the BIOS for processor overheat warnings (PC Health Section)?
And nope, it's never perfect. Just make it as close to as you can (for you).
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you were right...it was overheating, now i need some advice on what to do.
I was running disk defrag on my HD with MBM running, decided to leave it running and go to sleep.
The tempreture was at a steady 35degrees celsius
i was about to go to sleep when i heard the beeping sound, i turned back my monitor and saw that my CPU tempreture had risin to 63 degrees, however in a minute it dropped back to 35-37degrees celsius...
my case tempreture remained the same.
what could cause such a tempreture spike?
would my sensor be damaged?
would there be alot of dust causing too much heat to be acumilated?
argh....
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it this bios alarm set to this figure contact intel for more. or reset defaults in the bios del key on boot and sisoft sanda would not cause this....try aida32 and see what that comes up with have you altered any settings..no reply i guess..
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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.
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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?
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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).
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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.
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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 (http://www.justcooler.com.tw/english/products/cpu/new/XP-2100.jpg)
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.
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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
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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.
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more info on mobo vid card hard drive etc...and o/s..what bios award phoenix etc..