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gehenna

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#242087 10-Oct-2018 12:05
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I upgraded my home server about a month ago.  I went with a Coffee Lake i7, Asrock Motherboard, and reused a modular EVGA PSU that I had from the previous build, and the fans and CPU cooler are also reused.

 

Everything works great, better than great.  It's running Unraid, has about 8 drives totalling 24TB with additional parity and SSD cache, and I'm running several docker containers and plugins.  All that stuff is great.  It also has another SSD that sits outside the array for a Windows 10 VM.

 

Here's where it gets weird.  Once in a while the computer will whistle.  Kind of like the sound a whistling kettle makes.  It only does it for about 2 seconds a few times a day.  I haven't been able to nail down where the whistling comes from.  The previous build never made a noise so I assume it's not the PSU.  The fans and CPU were also silent in the old build.

 

It's not overheating, in fact it runs a lot cooler than the last build.  It doesn't have a dedicated GPU.  It doesn't happen on a specific/regular basis.  Seems to be random.  There's no errors in the Unraid logs, and I have a few tools running as plugins and dockers to monitor hardware, so nothing being flagged their either.

 

Any ideas?


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geocom
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  #2105499 10-Oct-2018 12:10
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Could be coil whine





Geoff E




gehenna

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  #2105503 10-Oct-2018 12:12
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I saw that too a few weeks ago when I was briefly looking into the issue.  I only found it related to GPUs though, which I don't have, but admittedly didn't do much digging at that point.


geocom
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  #2105507 10-Oct-2018 12:20
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What model asrock motherboard are you using?





Geoff E




Stu

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  #2105508 10-Oct-2018 12:21
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Because it doesn't know the words




People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

 

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MikeB4
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  #2105510 10-Oct-2018 12:21
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It likes a happy tune tongue-out





Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.


gehenna

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  #2105511 10-Oct-2018 12:23
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geocom:

 

What model asrock motherboard are you using?

 

 

Z370 Extreme4


 
 
 

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  #2105591 10-Oct-2018 13:29
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If it's coil whine then it should be happening during times of load. Why its associated with GPU's is because pulling 300W of power for 300fps in a game causes the gpu components to make the noise.

 

 

In order of likely culprits, PSU then motherboard (iGPU). OC the coffeelake to 5GHz, do a prime95 and see if it starts whistling. If you have another psu test it with that. Same results? Then probably something on the mobo making the sound.

gehenna

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  #2105640 10-Oct-2018 14:51
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I had a look at a bunch of videos on youtube of people recording their coil whine sounds, and to be honest my noise doesn't sound anything at all like that.  Certainly is not happening under load, it happened a few hours ago and nothing was happening on the server other than the usual VM/Dockers.  Load in my case would be multiple transcodes all happening simultaneously, and even then it often doesn't happen.  


geocom
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  #2105648 10-Oct-2018 14:59
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Any chance you can just leave your phone recording sound until after it does it so we can actually hear the sound. May also be helpful if you could post a photo of the inside.

 

Otherwise its a bit hard to really say what it could be.





Geoff E


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  #2105661 10-Oct-2018 15:31
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geocom:

 

Any chance you can just leave your phone recording sound until after it does it so we can actually hear the sound. May also be helpful if you could post a photo of the inside.

 

Otherwise its a bit hard to really say what it could be.

 

 

Too unpredictable as to when it will happen.  Sometimes it doesn't happen at all for days, sometimes a few times a day.  Literally just sounds like 2 seconds of a whistling kettle.


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  #2105677 10-Oct-2018 15:51
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Possibly a fan bearing on the way out? Could just be a coincidence that it has occurred after your rebuild. Buy a cheap new fan and swap it with existing one at a time?

Intermittent faults are always the hardest to find.

 
 
 
 

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gehenna

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  #2105679 10-Oct-2018 16:00
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geocom: May also be helpful if you could post a photo of the inside. 

 

Click to see full size

 

Click to see full size


Gordy7
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  #2106758 12-Oct-2018 13:32
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Coil whine.... interesting name for what used to happen in the ferrite core gaps of EHT transformers in TVs.... due to magnetostriction of the ferrite.

 

I think the cure was to glue the ferrite gap faces. Not a user solution however.

 

The OP describes the whistle as being like a kettle.... Maybe also an issue with an onboard piezo buzzer.

 

My 2 cents worth :-)

 

 





Gordy

 

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.


gehenna

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  #2107204 13-Oct-2018 11:16
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No buzzer on the board that I'm aware of.

Gordy7
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  #2107218 13-Oct-2018 11:57
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Not much you can do unless experts discover the cause.

 

The only option may be an acoustic data logger of some sort  with sense points in various places.

 

So, would you describe the whistle level as loud (shouting), medium (talking), or quiet (whisper level)?

 

Pure tone whistle or a Grrrrrr or perhaps like a pea whistle?

 

The ear can focus or tune on annoying sounds and it is difficult to identify with recorders.

 

I have tried recording a fan speed control noise I have (as the controller changes speed of the fan) without success...

 

 





Gordy

 

My first ever AM radio network connection was with a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.


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