Computer Humming
 

Greetings All,
After a full day of computer use (say 8 or 10 hours) my computer starts to......hum. Its not high pitched by any means but just this low, constant hum. What is it and what does it mean? Thanks for any help or info. Cheers.

If it is coming from the case it could be a fan. There are a lot of things it could be. Such as a monitor.

Check your proc fan and your case fan

Power supply, or monitor. Capacitors can cause those kinds of noises, believe it or not.

If its the power supply, best replace it now cause its about to go.

Yeah, it's probably the PSU caps like yakimushi said. They either turn on your PC for a second and then shut off, or they start making a constant noise when they're about to die. I'd try a different PSU in the PC if possible. That, or unplug EVERYTHING on your PC and just turn the PSU on connected to the motherboard and see if it hums.

Bad PSU's are usually caused by overloading them, so I'd look into that.

-Lasereth

my old Emachines used to do this, and still does at first if I shut it down. I used to rap around the case with a finger or two and I could get it to subside.

Before you go and start replacing things like fans and power supplies, make sure it isn't in fact, just a wonky fan.

Once the humming starts, manually stop each one of your fans to see if it's the trouble maker. By "stop" I mean, stick your finger in there (it won't hurt) and determine which fan is making the noise. If you don't find a bad/noisy fan, replace the PS.

Make sure the fan/whatever are attached tightly. loseness = vibration

the_marq - Dont tell anyone with Black label Delta or a Vantec Tornado (perhaps others too) to put their fingers in a fan, it WILL cut off a portion of their finger if they do so ;)

Damn Delta Black Label took a portion of my finger AND a portion of my fingernail :mad:

I had a delta to take a fingertip off, as well as 3 blades of the fan.... then i had to clean blood out of the case and mobo

Man, I've been sticking my fingers in fans for years, guess I've just been lucky to have not come across one of these carniverous ones so far. Still my advice remains the same...stop the fans "safely" to find the source of the hum.

Much better :) Sorry to hear that a lot of you have had a similar problem as my cousin who thought it wouldn't hurt like all the other fans ;) I just looked at the RPM and figured anything spinning at over 5k RPM is likly to hurt hehe

my laptop fan does that sometimes, a little knock and its all good! wouldn't recommend but mines on its last legs anyway :)