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From: Kevin the Drummer on 3 Jun 2010 11:39
I'm having trouble with noise in my system. I custom built the system
doing all the usual things to make it quiet, and it was running just
great. It was quiet enough that sitting with my head 1m away from the
system the florescent lights 2m away were louder by far than the
computer.

Then my ABIT-AV8-3rd-Eye motherboard died and I had to replace it with a
Tyan Tomcat K8E S2865G2NR motherboard. After doing that the machine
made a "whir whir whir ..." sound, with the whirring being about one
second between whirs. I thought I might have damaged something in the
swap, and I thought the new noise was coming from the CPU fan.

Last night I replaced the old Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu CPU cooler with a
similar Zalman CNPS 7500 AlCu LED CPU cooler. But, when I powered on
the unit I get the same whir. I didn't really want the LED in the CPU
fan, but it turns out that it's giving me a hint as the brightness of the
LED in the CPU fan is pulsing exactly in time with whirring noise. I
wondered if I might be able to get at some fan controls via the BIOS,
and booted into that screen. I found another clue, the whirring is
exactly in time with the system clock, whirring just as each second on
the clock ticks by.

I put an add-on fan speed control in-line with my CPU fan power. When I
turn the speed control up and down it works as expected, and the normal
fan noise changes with fan speed. But, the whirring noise stays
constant with CPU fan speed.

The hard drives seem quiet enough, and not the source of whirring. The
case fans are quiet enough that I have to strain to hear them with my
ear right by them. My video card is fan-less. My power supply isn't
making the whirring sounds.

What am I dealing with here? Do I have a motherboard that causes this?
Are the Zalman fans that I love in all my other systems being upset by
the Tyan motherboard? What else can I do to troubleshoot this? My next
random attempt, half in panic, would be to swap motherboards again.

Thanks all.....

Maybe I should embrace the "pulsing whir" and start a band with that name?

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